TheBible and Colonialism A Moral

A MORAL CRITIQUE
Michael Prior, CM
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Michael Prior, CM

Sheffield Academic;: Press
Copyright 1997 Sheffield Academic Press
Published by Sheffield Academic Press Ltd
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Sheffield S II 9 AS
England
Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain
by The Cromwell Press
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 1-85075-815-8
Acknowledgments
Preface
CONTENTS
Part I
THE MORAL PROBLEM OF THE BIBLICAL LAND TRADITIONS
Chapter 1
THE BIBLICAL TRADITIONS ON LAND
The Biblical Traditions on Land, at Face Value
The Land in the Torah
The Land in the Book of Joshua
The Land in Other Books of the Bible
Exploitation of the Biblical Traditions on Land
Part II
COLONIAL APPROPRIATIONS OF THE LAND TRADITIONS
Chapter 2
9
11
16
16
18
29
32
33
COLONIALISM AND LA TIN AMERICA 48
12 October 1492: The 'Discovery' of America and its Cost 48
Theological Underpinning: Mediaeval Christian Theology 52
Dissenting Voices 57
Modem Theological Reflection and the Bible 62
Chapter 3
COLONIALISM AND SOUTH AFRICA 71
Sketching Boer History 71
Fabricating the Myth of Early Afrikaner Nationalism 78
The Biblical-Theological Core of Afrikaner Nationalism 89
Myth, History, Science and Morality 94
Conclusion 103
--,
6 The Bible and Colonialism
Chapter 4
COLONIALISM AND PALESTINE 106
The Early Phase of Zionism (1896-1917) 106
The Second Phase of Zionism (1917-1948) 122
The Third Phase of Zionism (The State of Israel, 1948-1967) 136
The Fourth Phase of Zionism (1967-) 140
The Religious Dimension 149
o o c l ~ o o IN
Chapter 5
FABRICATING COLONIAL MYTHS 174
The Comparative Myths of Colonialism 175
The Myths of Zionism 185
The Foundational Myths of the State of Israel 185
Conclusion 208
Part III
COLONIALISM AND BIBLICAL EVIDENCE
Chapter 6
REINTERPRETING THE BIBLICAL EVIDENCE:
LITERARY AND HISTORICAL QUESTIONS 216
The Patriarchal Narratives 216
The Pentateuchal Narratives 223
The 'Israelite' Conquest-Settlement Narratives 228
Conclusion 247
Chapter 7
REHABILITATING THE BIBLE:
TOWARDS A MORAL READING OF THE BIBLE 253
The Land in Modem Biblical Scholarship: Status Quaestionis 253
The Moral Problem of the Land Traditions of the Bible 260
The Impact of Reading the Bible 264
The Divine Provenance of the Bible 266
Liturgical 'Censoring' of the Word of God 273
The Problem of the Exodus Paradigm 278
From Jerusalem to Rome 284
CONCLUSION
Bibliography
Index of References
Index of Authors
Contents 7
287
297
331
338
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Much of the research for this study was done at considerable remove
from the effects of colonial exploitation. My colleague at St Mary's
University College, Dr Alan Lester, read an earlier draft of the chap-
ter on South Africa, and offered many fundamental insights on the
revisionist trends within more recent Afrikaner historiography. David
McDowall made very valuable suggestions for the material on Zionism.
I am grateful to St Mary's for granting me a sabbatical year which
enabled me to complete the work.
The final revision was undertaken during my tenure as Visiting
Professor at Bethlehem University and Scholar-in-Residence at Tantur
Ecumenical Institute for Theology in Jerusalem. Movement between
Tantur and the University was interrupted daily by the checkpoint
preventing Bethlehemites entering Jerusalem. My context was a per-
sistent reminder of the humiliation, degradation and oppression which
colonizing enterprises invariably inflict on their indigenes. Working
against a background of bullet fire and in the shadow of tanks added
a certain intensity to my research. A former student of Bethlehem
University was among those killed in the disturbances of 25 and
26 September 1996. Despite the difficulties, I was able to deliver a
public lecture in Jerusalem on 'Does the God of the Bible sanction
ethnic cleansing?' At the beginning of term, the staff of the University
speculated whether the academic year would proceed without too
much interruption to the teaching schedule. In all, we lost about a
month's work. I am very grateful to my colleagues at the University,
and to the De la Salle Brothers for the warmth of their hospitality. I
am deeply indebted to the Vice-Chancellor, Br Ronald Gallagher FSC
for getting me to Bethlehem University, and to the Superior of the
Community, Br Cyril Litecky FSC for his daily kindnesses.
Professor Thomas L. Thompson of Copenhagen read a draft of
Chapters 6 and 7, and offered many suggestions. Tantur postgraduate
student, Fr Rene Otzoy, SOB of Guatemala read the chapter on Latin
America, and many others read different sections. Tantur scholars
Dr Bengt Holmberg of Lund University, and Dr Marlin Jeschke of
Goshen College read the entire manuscript, and offered very helpful
suggestions. The staff and post-graduate students at Tantur provided a
most pleasant and exciting context for my sabbatical study.
Almost at the end of the revision of the book, I developed one 'total
closure' and one 'partial closure' in the arteries of my heart, as if
mirroring the externals of my day at the Tantur checkpoint. Instruc-
tions I had left for its completion in the event of God surprising me
with death proved to be redundant, thanks to the medical expertise of
Dr Hisham Nassar and the staff of St Joseph's and the Hadassah
hospitals in Jerusalem, to whom, under God, I am indebted for the
opportunity of completing what I began several years ago. I was fully
supported while I was ill by the concern of family, my Vincentian
Community, and by friends and colleagues.
In the course of preparing the manuscript for publication I was
greatly encouraged and helped by Dr John Jarick, and enthusiastically
supported by Mrs Jean Allen of Sheffield Academic Press. I am very
grateful to Steve Barganski, Malcolm Ward and Robert Knight for the
care with which the book was produced. The anonymous reader of the
draft manuscript offered many helpful suggestions.
PREFACE
I can say that I know of only one people which felt able to assert that it
actually had a divine command to exterminate whole populations among
those it conquered; namely Israel. Nowadays Christians, as well as Jews,
seldom care to dwell on the merciless ferocity of Jahweh, as revealed not
by hostile sources but by the very literature they themselves regard as
sacred. Indeed they continue as a rule to forget the very existence of this
incriminating material (G.E.M. de Ste Croix, in Said 1988: 166).
The subject of this study is the biblical narrative of the promise of the
land of Canaan to Abraham and his posterity, the reiteration of that
promise to Moses and his fellow escapees from Egypt, and the account
of the conquest of the land as reflected in Joshua and Judges. It also
investigates how the biblical account has been used to justify the con-
quest of land in different regions and at different periods, focusing on
the Spanish and Portuguese colonization and settlement of Latin
America, the white settlement in southern Africa, and the Zionist con-
quest and settlement in Palestine. The subject matter demands that the
discussion engage with the distinctive discourses of several disciplines.
The proliferation of academic disciplines and sub-disciplines has
ensured that few deal with any subject in a way which respects its
complexity. The discourse on colonialism is a good case in point.
International law discusses titles to sovereignty. International conven-
tions discuss human rights. Sociology and anthropology discuss ques-
tions concerning the diverse cultural, political and religious identity of
the inhabitants. And there are religious and theological perspectives
also. One of the disappointing features of such a diversified discourse
is that each element functions in isolation from the others. Theological
reflection has nothing to say about international law. International
jurisprudence is silent on questions of human rights. Human rights'
advocates steer clear of principles other than those universally agreed.
Geographers and sociologists describe what is happening, and tend not
to make value judgments. And yet each of these elements (and many
more) reflects only an element of the fuller picture.
The specialization of scholarship in every branch of learning in our
generation has been such that non-experts retire from the debate out
of fear. Specialist knowledge intimidates outsiders, and even the most
versatile scholars scarcely ever move beyond the limits of their own
discipline. There is a general tendency to escape into specialization
and evade the responsibility of engagement with the wider world, with
the excuse that even critical moral questions must be left to the
specialists. Every relevant discipline which deals with the question of
the land of Canaan in the Bible falls victim to the affliction of special-
ization. Biblical scholars, in their concentration on questions of histor-
ical and literary criticism, pay virtually no attention to the ethical
dimensions of the discussion. In general terms, scholars of human rights
eschew any reference to the God question, while acknowledging per-
functorily the link between God and the land, and political scientists
discuss the issue purely in terms of political power and interests.
What results is a series of truncated discourses, each peddling its
own grasp of wisdom, with none respecting the complexity of the total
question. Even within the biblical portion of the discourse, it would be
a very brave person who would pontificate on more than one aspect.
No specialist would be bold enough to risk a sortie into another area
which is replete with expert comment: the patriarchal narratives, the
archaeology, the history, the literary questions of genre and composi-
tion, the periods of exile and the attitudes to land reflected in the New
Testament, etc. When a book attempts to deal with the question from
the biblical outlook alone, invariably a team of scholars is invited to
engage in the task (e.g. the nineteen scholars in Prudky 1995). A cor-
responding situation obtains in the other relevant discourses. The task
is too large for any one person. And yet moral choice rests with the
individual.
The particular perspective of this study is the moral question which
arises on consideration of the impact which conquest and settlement
have had on the indigenous populations. What are the appropriate cri-
teria by which to evaluate enterprises of conquest and settlement?
What is the role of the Bible? Is one to be guided by the criteria of
human decency which are enshrined in conventions of human rights
and international law? It is novel to subject traditions of the Bible,
which is customarily viewed as a yardstick of moral excellence and as
'the soul of Theology', to an ethical evaluation which derives from
general ethical principles. This study argues that such an enterprise is
Preface 13
not only legitimate, but necessary. When a people is dispossessed, dis-
persed and humiliated by others, one's moral sensitivities are enlivened.
When such activities are carried out, not only with alleged divine
support, but at the alleged express command of God, one's moral self
recoils in horror. Any association of God with the destruction of
people must be subjected to an ethical analysis. The obvious contradic-
tion between what some claim to be God's will and ordinary civilized,
decent behaviour poses the question as to whether God is a chauvin-
istic, nationalistic and militaristic xenophobe.
However, in general, theological reflection has evaded such consid-
erations. And yet, the discourse deriving from the perspectives of
human rights and international law proceeds without serious inter-
action with religion and theology. My purpose here is to promote an
examination of a text which is almost so familiar as to resist further
enquiry. All study of the Bible of necessity involves 'an archaeological
retrospective' (Foucault). What could have served in the past as solid
foundations has become an open site, requiring the clearing away of
the new site, inviting further investigation and opening up new ques-
tions. The focus of attention here is the role of the Bible in influencing
human behaviour at a communal or national level. We know, of
course, that no society was ever driven by one ideological factor
alone, be that economic, nationalistic or religious. 'For any reasonably
significant historical development, monocausal explanation is ipso facto
wrong' (Lonsdale 1981: 140). In practice, systems advance through
the interplay of a number of components.
In devising an appropriate methodology for the investigation of a
situation which has multiple elements, perhaps we have something to
learn from two of the principles of Quantum Theory, Complement-
arity and Uncertainty. Bohr's Principle of Complementarity argues
that the classical definition of states in terms of space and time is
unsatisfactory, and that it is only by combining these two com-
plementary aspects that a true and complete picture of even the
physical world can be obtained. At more complicated levels, different
and even opposing elements complement each other in helping to
describe a complex mechanism. On the other hand, Heisenberg's
Principle of Uncertainty reveals that at any one time, only one of the
elements in a system can be subjected to analysis: it is not possible
to ascertain both the position and momentum of a particle. There is
the dilemma that even the act of observation itself can distort the
system, and does so, at least at the atomic level.
I propose to investigate the deployment of the Bible in a selection of
instances in a way which attempts to respect the complexity of the
social and political conditions in each case. The scope of the study is
wide. It includes discussion of the Bible and modern biblical herme-
neutics, post-biblical Jewish and Christian cultures, the colonization by
Europeans of Latin America, South Africa and the Middle East, the
history and development of Zionism, the international law of war and
of occupation, and human rights. If the task of dealing competently
with virtually every aspect of the problem is so formidable as to inti-
midate even the most versatile and gifted academic, the concerned
individual person nevertheless is left with the moral imperative of
deciding on the matter. While a committee of competent and versatile
scholars is likely to do better than one individual, it does not have a
unified conscience. Responsibility for moral judgment and action rests
with the individual and cannot be exercised vicariously. Moral respon-
sibility may not be shifted even to others more gifted, learned and
morally upright than oneself.
I contend that theology should concern itself with the real condi-
tions of people's lives, and not satisfy itself with comfortable survival
in an academic or ecclesial ghetto. This book probes some of the theo-
logical and biblical hermeneutical issues involved in the impact of
colonialist ideology and practice in different regions and from differ-
ent periods. It examines the use of the Bible as a legitimization for the
implementation of an ideological, political programme, the conse-
quences of which have been, and continue to be, the irreversible suf-
fering of entire communities and, in some cases, their virtual annihi-
lation as a people. The recognition of the suffering caused by colonial-
ism requires one to re-examine the biblical, theological and moral
dimensions of the question. I understand theology to be a discourse
which promotes a moral ideal and a better future for all people,
oppressed and oppressors alike. This study is intended for those
directly involved in biblical and theological discourse. It addresses
aspects of biblical hermeneutics which have been neglected. It intends
also to inform a wider public on issues which have implications for
human well-being as well as for allegiance to God. While such a ven-
ture might be regarded as an instructive academic contribution by any
competent scholar, to assume responsibility for doing so is for me of
the order of a moral imperative.
Part I
THE MORAL PROBLEM OF THE BIBLICAL LAND TRADITIONS
Chapter 1
THE BIBLICAL TRADITIONS ON LAND
The Biblical Traditions on Land, at Face Value
In this chapter I concentrate on the biblical texts that deal with the
theme of land, especially Genesis-Joshua. To facilitate a straight-
forward reading of the text critical comment is deferred to Chapters 6
and 7. However, some preliminary observations are in order. The
Bible, like all libraries, reflects a range of different literary forms and
contents. Moreover, neither its content nor its authority is identical
for all interested parties. The New Testament has a special place of
significance for Christians. They refer to the Hebrew Scriptures as the
Old Testament, while Jews use the term Tanakh.
1
All 39 books are
recognized as Sacred Scriptures by the Christian Church, and also by
the Jewish community, although they enjoy distinct levels of authority
in the different traditions.
2
Even from biblical times, the Torah was considered to have a cer-
tain unity. There is a sense in which the two other divisions of the
Hebrew Bible derive from it. The Nebi'im (former and latter Prophets)
deal in the main with calling the people back to the vision outlined in
the Torah, while the Kethubim (Writings) deal with living out the
Torah on a day-to-day basis. The writings of the Prophets gradually
took their place beside the Torah as a second category of 'sacred
Scriptures', and some degree of canonical authority was transferred to
I. 'For the Jew, the books of the Bible are ... Torah, a divine instruction, com-
mandment and revelation addressed to Israel' (Schlirer 1979: 321). Although the
Torah strictly consists of only the first five books of the Bible, the term is used more
loosely also to cover all the Hebrew Scriptures.
2. For example, in the Jewish community the Torah has a much greater promi-
nence than the Prophets, which are so beloved of Christians.
1. The Biblical Traditions on Land 17
them also (Schtirer 1979: 316).
3
At a still later stage, the corpus of
Writings also was elevated to the category of Scripture. While the
origin of the collections of the Prophets and the Writings is not
known, the earliest attestation to their association with the Torah is in
the Prologue to the second-century BC book of Jesus ben Sira. The
Torah has always occupied the highest place: 'In it is set down, in
writing and in full, the original revelation given to Israel. The
Prophets and the Writings merely hand down the message still fur-
ther. For this reason they are described as "tradition" ... and cited as
such' (Schtirer 1979: 319). It is legitimate, therefore, to concentrate
on the Torah in our discussion of the land of Canaan.
There is no single, coherent view of 'the land' in the Bible, but
rather a variety of perspectives from periods when 'the land' was
evaluated variously. A unified, comprehensive treatment of the subject
is impossible. The way in which the children of Israel settled in the
land of Canaan is a matter of considerable scholastic interest, and of
great relevance in both the past and the present. It has implications for
our understanding of God, and his relation to the people of Israel, to
non-Israelites such as the Canaanites, and, by extension, to all other
peoples. A number of interrelated questions arises: how is one to read
the Bible? and, what significance is attached to the uncovering of 'the
meaning of the text'? Is it to be read as an integrated and coherent
whole, as if it were the work of one author of one period? or is one
obliged to take account of the long process of composition? What is
the stance of the reader with respect to the text? and with what
authority does one invest it and its interpretation? Does the reader
consider it to be 'the Word of God', with the authority one associates
with its allegedly divine provenance? I deal with these matters in
Chapter 7. I focus here on some features of 'the land' in the Bible
without attending to the mode of composition, that is, dealing mainly
with the text at face value. I consider later the implications that a sen-
sitivity to the mode of composition suggests (Chapter 6).
3. In several places in the New Testament we find the two-part formula, the
Law and the Prophets (ho nomos kai hoi prophetai-e.g. Mt. 5.17; Lk. 24.27; Jn
1.46; Acts 13.15; Rom. 3.21). In Lk. 24.44 alone we have the trilogy, the Law of
Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.
The Land in the Torah
The Book of Genesis
Genesis 1-11 presents its perspective on the origins of the universe,
the world, its animals and human beings, while Gen. 11.27-50.26
deals with the origins of the Israelite people, through its ancestors,
Abra(ha)m and Sarah, down to the death of Jacob and Joseph in
Egypt. I shall focus here on the place of land in the relationship
between God and the people. There is much support in the Hebrew
Scriptures for the belief that the land of Canaan was promised by God
to Abraham and his descendants, and that their possession of it was in
conformity with his will:
Abram passed through the land to the place at Schechem, to the oak of
Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then Yahweh
appeared to Abram, and said, 'To your descendants I will give this land'
(Gen. 12.6-7).
Abram left the land because of a famine and sojourned in Egypt.
After he and his wife were deported (Gen. 12.20), they returned to
the region of Bethel. Since the land could not support both Abram and
Lot, tensions arose (Gen. 13.5-6). The writer adds, 'At that time the
Canaanites and the Perizzites dwelt in the land' (Gen. 13.7). Notwith-
standing, Abram and Lot divided the land between them, Lot choosing
all the Jordan Valley, and Abram choosing to dwell in the land of
Canaan. After this 'land-for-peace' settlement, Yahweh said to Abram,
'Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward
and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land that you see I
will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring
like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth,
your offspring also can be counted. Rise up, walk through the length and
the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you' (Gen. 13.14-17).
And so, with divine approval, Abram moved his tent and came to
dwell by the oaks of Mamre at Hebron, where he built an altar to
Yahweh (Gen. 13.18).
Yahweh made a covenant with Abram/ Abraham, saying,
'To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great
river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the
Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the
Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites' (Gen. 15.18-21) .. .'No
longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I
---------------------------
1. The Biblical Traditions on Land
have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you
exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come
from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your
offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting
covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will
give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now
an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their
God' (Gen. 17. 5-8).
19
Subsequently, the promise is made to Isaac also (Gen. 26.3-4), and, to
guarantee the inheritance, Isaac prayed that the promise to Abraham
would be fulfilled in Jacob (Gen. 28.4). While Jacob was asleep near
Haran, he heard the similar promise (Gen. 28.13-15). When God
appeared to Jacob a second time, he changed his name to Israel, and
promised the land again (Gen. 35.12). In the final verses of the book,
Joseph said to his brothers,
'I am about to die; but God will surely come to you, and bring you up out
of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob'
(Gen. 50.24).
The Book of Exodus
As the title suggests, the main theme is the exodus from Egypt (Exod.
1.1-15.21). But what transpires between that event and the settlement
in Canaan is critical. There is the unique encounter between Yahweh
and Moses on Mount Sinai (Exod. 19.1-40.38), where the people
remain while Yahweh speaks to Moses (Exod. 19.2-Num. 10.10).
Yahweh gives them all that an ancient people in transition require, a
leader, an identit and a romise of a future restin lace. a h w e ~
con rms Moses as the leader of the people, gives them the promises
and the law, lays down the design of the portable shrine of his
dwelling and speeds the people on their way to the possession of the
land of Canaan. The contents of the book have had a vital influence on
later biblical writers, and the significance of the story has been critical
in both Jewish and Christian circles. It symbolizes the community of
Yahweh, rescued by him from servitude in an alien land and led to the
land of promise.
Moses signalled his intentions when he called his son Gershom, for
he said, 'I have been a sojourner in a foreign land' (Exod. 2.22).
When the people of Israel groaned under their bondage, Yahweh
heard it, remembered his covenant (Exod. 2.24), and would rescue the
people from the Land of Egypt:
'I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them
up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and
honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the
Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites' (Exod. 3.8).
Moses is commanded to carry this message of liberation to the people
(Exod. 3 .17), and Yahweh reaffirmed his covenant with the people
through Moses, saying,
'I am Yahweh. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai,
but by my name Yahweh I did not make myself known to them. I also
established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the
land in which they resided as aliens' (Exod. 6. 2-4).
Moses is to assure the people that Yahweh would free them from the
burdens of the Egyptians, take them as his people, be their God and
bring them into the land that he swore to give to Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob (Exod. 6.6-8). In their dealings with Pharaoh, Moses and Aaron
stressed the 'Let my people go' petition, without any reference to
where they were to go, except to sacrifice to, or serve Yahweh (Exod.
7.14; 8.1, 8, 20; 9.13; 10.3). The land of promise appears again in the
instruction on the memorial of the Passover (Exod. 12.24-25).
Having been in Egypt for 430 years the Israelites journeyed from
Rameses to Succoth, about 600,000 men on foot, besides children
(Exod. 12.37-40). The instructions on celebrating the Passover later
include reference to being settled in the land (Exod. 12.8):
'When Yahweh brings you into the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites,
the Amorites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which he swore to your
ancestors to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, you shall keep
this observance in this month. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread,
and on the seventh day there shall be a festival to Yahweh' (Exod. 13.5-6).
The gift of the land is reiterated (Exod. 13.11-12).
The journey begins. Moses' Song of Victory after the crossing of
the Red Sea included reference to the consternation that the destruc-
tion of the Egyptians brought on the inhabitants of Philistia, the chiefs
of Edom, the leaders of Moab and all the inhabitants of Canaan (Exod.
15.1-16). Already the Israelites are virtually settled (Exod. 15.17-19).
While wandering in the wilderness they ate manna for 40 years, until
they came to the border of the land of Canaan (Exod. 16.35). But first
there was trouble with Amalek, whom Joshua and his people defeated
with the sword at Rephidim (Exod. 17.8-16). Yahweh promised at
Sinai that if they obeyed his commandments, the people would be his
treasured possession (Exod. 19.3-8). Exodus 20 deals with the words
Yahweh spoke to Moses, and chs. 21-23 detail the ordinances, includ-
ing those befitting a settled people, including,
'When my angel goes in front of you, and brings you to the Amorites, the
Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and
I blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods, or worship them,
or follow their practices, but you shall utterly demolish them and break
their pillars in pieces' (Exod. 23.23-24).
Their warrior god surely will be with them:
I will send my terror in front of you ... and I will make all your enemies
turn their backs to you. And I will send the pestilence in front of you,
which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from
before you. I will not drive them out from before you in one year. .. Little
by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased
and possess the land. I will set your borders from the Red Sea to the sea
of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates; for I will
hand over to you the inhabitants of the land, and you shall drive them out
before you. You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. They
shall not live in your land, or they will make you sin against me; for if you
worship their gods, it will surely be a snare to you (Exod. 23.27-33).
Nevertheless, despite the widespread slaughter of the indigenes, we
find the command not to oppress a resident alien (Exod. 22.21; 23.9).
While Moses was delaying on the mountain the people sacrificed to the
golden calf. Such was his anger that he broke the tablets and destroyed
the golden calf (Exod. 32.19-21). He then commanded the sons of
Levi to prove their loyalty and guarantee their ordination by slaugh-
tering about 3000 of their kinspeople (Exod. 32.26-30). It was time to
move on:
Yahweh said to Moses, 'Go, leave this place, you and the people whom
you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, and go to the land of which
I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, "To your descendants I
will give it." I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the
Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the
Jebusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go
up among you, or I would consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-
necked people' (Exod. 33.1-3).
The broken tablets would be replaced by Yahweh (Exod. 34.1-5).
After the appearance of God Moses asked pardon on behalf of the
people (Exod. 34.8-9). Yahweh promised to perform marvels for the
people, and demanded uncompromising loyalty and separation:
'See, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the
Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Take care not to
make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you are going,
or it will become a snare among you. You shall tear down their altars,
break their pillars, and cut down their sacred poles (for you shall worship
no other god, because Yahweh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous
God). You shall not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for
when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to their gods,
someone among them will invite you, and you will eat of the sacrifice'
(Exod. 34.11-15).
The Israelites are warned against taking 'foreign' wives and making
cast idols, and are enjoined to keep the festivals (Exod. 34.16-23). The
divine benevolence is reiterated: 'For I will cast out nations before
you, and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land when you
go up to appear before Yahweh your God three times in the year'
(Exod. 34.24). Moses was commanded to 'write these words .. .! have
made a covenant with you and with Israel' (Exod. 34.27-28). After he
came down, Moses gave them 'in commandment all that Yahweh had
spoken with him on Mount Sinai' (Exod. 34.32). The book of Exodus
ends with chs. 35-40 describing the carrying out of the command to
construct the Dwelling of Yahweh.
The Book of Leviticus
The book is a liturgical handbook of the Ievitical priesthood composed
to ensure the holiness of every aspect of life. It follows on from
Exodus 25-40, and the general theme continues in the book of
Numbers. Lev. 1-7 legislates for the different kinds of sacrifices, and
Lev. 8-10 treats of the anointing (ordination) of Aaron and his sons.
Yahweh mandated Aaron to distinguish between the holy and the
common, the unclean and the clean, and to teach the children of Israel
all the statutes (Lev. 10.8-11). This is followed by a collection of the
laws of purity and climaxes in the purification of the Day of Atone-
ment (chs. 11-16-Yom Kippurim in Lev. 23.28). The Holiness Code
deals with the sacredness of blood, of sex, and various rules of con-
duct and penalties (Lev. 17-20), which is followed by matters of
priestly sanctity, rules on sacrifice (Lev. 21-22) and the festivals of
the liturgical year (Lev. 23). There is legislation for the Sabbatical
year and Jubilee year (Lev. 25). Sanctions are outlined (Lev. 26), and,
finally, ch. 27, which, as an appendix to the Holiness Code, deals with
gifts for the sanctuary.
The gift of the land of Canaan is reiterated (Lev. 14.34), and
Yahweh insists on the observance of his statutes, rather than of those
of Egypt or Canaan (Lev. 18.1-5). Adherence to the laws of purity is
required to ensure residence in the land (Lev. 18). Specified prohibi-
tions include giving any offspring for sacrifice to Molech (v. 21),
lying with a male as with a woman (v. 22) and having sexual relations
with any animal (v. 23). For such abuses the inhabitants of Canaan
would be vomited out. The Israelites will be vomited out also should
they commit such abominations, rather than keep Yahweh's statutes
(Lev. 18.24-30).
Again, the persecution of resident aliens is forbidden (Lev. 19.33-
34). The penalty of death by stoning is required for those who give
any of their offspring to Molech (Lev. 20.2), and for other violations
(Lev. 20.9-21). The conditions for continuing to reside in the land,
and for the separateness of the people are reiterated (Lev. 20.22-27).
After the legislation for the festivals, the entry into the land is brought
to the fore (Lev. 25.2-3): the sabbatical year of rest for the land and
the Jubilee Year are to be observed. Chapter 26 outlines the blessings
which will befall the people if they carry out what Yahweh requires:
fertility of the soil, peace, victory over enemies, abundant offspring
and the assurance of Yahweh's presence (26.3-13). Disobedience will
be rewarded by sevenfold punishment: disease, destruction of crops,
lack of rain, the return of wild beasts, enemy, disease and famine, and
one-tenth of the normal supply of bread, cannibalism, destruction of
cities and sanctuaries (Lev. 26.11-39). Dispersion and exile will
follow:
'I will devastate the land ... and you I will scatter among the nations, and I
will unsheathe the sword against you; your land shall be a desolation, and
your cities a waste ... You shall perish among the nations, and the land of
your enemies shall devour you. And those of you who survive shall lan-
guish in the land of your enemies because of their iniquities; also they
shall languish because of the iniquities of their ancestors' (Lev. 26.32-
39).
However, if the people confess their iniquity and that of their ances-
tors, 'then will I remember my covenant with Jacob ... and I will
remember the land' (Lev. 26.40-42). But even in the land of exile,
Yahweh will not spurn them nor break his covenant (Lev. 26.44-46).
The book ends with an appendix detailing how one redeemed a votive
offering (ch. 27).
The Book of Numbers
The Hebrew title, bemidbar ('in the wilderness') reflects its contents.
The book is organized around three phases of the wandering in the
wilderness: the organization of the community before its departure
from Sinai (Num. 1.1-10.10); the march through the desert from
Sinai to the Plains of Moab (Num. 10.11-21.35); and the preparation
for entry into the Promised Land from the Plains of Moab (Num.
22.1-36.13). No less than 603,550 males from 20 years old and
upward (Num. 1.45-46), and 8580 Levites would set out (Num. 4.48).
After ensuring the purity of the camp and the community (cbs. 5-6),
and performing the rites for the departure (Num. 7.1-10.10), they
march through the desert in stages, as in a liturgical procession,
punctuated by moaning and nostalgia for life in Egypt, from Sinai to
the Desert of Paran (Num. 10.11-12.16), to the threshold of the
Promised Land (Num. 13.1-15.41). The scouts who were sent out
reported that the people who lived in the land were strong, and the
towns were fortified and very large:
'The Amalekites live in the land of the Negeb; the Hittites, the Jebusites,
and the Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live by the
sea, and along the Jordan' (Num. 13.27-29).
After complaints from the congregation, and proposals to reverse the
exodus, Joshua and Caleb besought the people not to rebel against
Yahweh: 'Yahweh is with us; do not fear them' (Num. 14.7-9). After
much entreaty and threat, the people set out (Num. 14.25). At
Meribah, by striking the rock twice in search of water, Moses was
deprived of leading the people into the Promised Land (Num. 20.12).
Aaron's fate for his lack of trust was more severe, and issued in his
death (Num. 20.22-29). Then things took a more violent tum, with
the king of Arad capturing some of the Israelites:
Then Israel made a vow to Yahweh and said, 'If you will indeed give this
people into our hands, then we will utterly destroy their towns.' Yahweh
listened to the voice of Israel, and handed over the Canaanites; and they
utterly destroyed them and their towns; so the place was called Hormah
(Num. 21.1-3).
After King Sihon of the Amorites refused free passage, Israel put his
troops to the sword and took his land (Num. 21.21-24). King Og of
Bashan met a similar fate (Num. 21.34-35). Fearing the people of
Israel, the king of Moab summoned Balaam to curse the Israelites, but
------------------
instead he blessed them (Num. 22-24). However, the people began to
have sexual relations with the women of Moab, and to yoke them-
selves to the Baal of Peor. Yahweh's anger was kindled against Israel
(Num. 25.1-3), but Phinehas assuaged it by killing two idolaters, an
Israelite man and a Midianite woman, for which he was rewarded
with Yahweh's 'covenant of peace' (Num. 25.12). Yahweh commanded
Moses to harass the Midianites and defeat them (Num. 25 .16-17).
Moses was to be given another gaze at the land he would never
enter, and Yahweh appointed Joshua to succeed him (ch. 27). Chapter
31 brings us back to the war against the Midianites. Having killed
every male, the Israelites killed the five kings of Midian, in addition to
others, and also killed Balaam. They captured the women of Midian
and their little ones, took all their cattle, burned all their towns and
encampments, retaining all the booty, both people and animals. Moses
was particularly aggrieved that they allowed the women to live-they
had made the Israelites act treachero a ainst Y air
of Peor urn. 31.8-16). He ordered the killing of every male child
and every J'oman who had slept with a man. The young girls who had
not slept with a man they were to keep alive for themselves (Num.
31.18). Then they were to return to the more serious matters of reli-
gion, purifying themselves and their garments (Num. 31.19-20). The
booty was divided and due offerings made to Yahweh.
Chapter 32 recounts how the Reubenites and the Gadites wished to
occupy Transjordan rather than cross the Jordan, but Moses petitioned
them to take up arms and cross the Jordan before Yahweh, until he
has driven out his enemies from before him and the land is subdued.
Then they could cross back and occupy Transjordan (Num. 32.6-23).
They agreed. Moses gave them the kingdom of King Sihon of the
Amorites and the kingdom of King Og of Bashan.
In the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho, Yahweh spoke to
Moses, saying,
'Speak to the Israelites, and say to them: "When you cross over the
Jordan into the land of Canaan, you shall drive out all the inhabitants of
the land from before you, destroy all their figured stones, destroy all their
cast images, and demolish all their high places. You shall take possession
of the land and settle in it, for I have given you the land to possess ... But
if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then
those whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in
your sides; they shall trouble you in the land where you are settling. And I
will do to you as I thought to do to them"' (Num. 33.50-56).
Chapters 34-35 deal with the apportioning of the land, and the provi-
sion for the Levites. The final verse of the book recapitulates, 'These
are the commandments and the ordinances that Yahweh commanded
through Moses to the Israelites in the plains of Moab by the Jordan at
Jericho' (Num. 36.13).
The Book of Deuteronomy
This is primarily a law book, adapting the legal tradition to new
conditions. One of its distinctive emphases is the connection between
people and land. Moses addresses the people (Deut. 1.1-4.49) and
gives an homiletic introduction to the Law Book (Deut. 5.1-11.32).
The Law Book (12.1-26.15) and the concluding account of the giving
of the Law follow (Deut. 26.16-28.68). The third address (Deut.
29.1-30.20), the Last Will, Testament and death of Moses (Deut.
31.1-34.12) complete the work. it is hailed as the most theo-
logical book of the Old Testament, and an utoptan
which the djsadY.antaged (the widows, orphans and aliens) are dealt
with justly (Lohfink 1996), its treatment of the land and its indigenous
inhabitants...Q_oses a moral problematic.
fhe book continues the theme Of the promise of the land to
Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob and their descendants. Speaking in
Moab, Moses reminded the people of Yahweh's instructions at Horeb:
go to the hill country of the Amorites and the Arabah, the Negeb, the
land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the river Euphrates
(Deut. 1.6-8). The people were not to be intimidated by the fortified
cities, because, 'Yahweh your God who goes before you will himself
fight for you, just as he did in Egypt. .. ' (Deut. 1.30-31).
After Sihon, the Amorite king of Heshbon, refused passage to the
Israelites, Yahweh gave him over to them. They captured and utterly
destroyed all the cities, killing all the men, women and children (Deut.
2.33-34). The fate of Og, king of Bashan, was no better (Deut. 3.3).
Joshua was not to fear the battles ahead, for Yahweh fights for him
(Deut. 3.22). Moses would have to be satisfied with a mere view of the
land across the Jordan, which Joshua would occupy (Deut. 3.27-29).
Entry into the land was conditional upon keeping the statutes and ordi-
nances of the Lord (Deut. 4.1-8). Should the new settlers abandon
them they would be scattered among the nations (Deut. 4.26-27).
Moses repeated the Decalogue of Yahweh (Deut. 5.6-21). The central-
ity of observing the Law is again emphasized. After the Shema we read,
And when the Lord your God brings you into the land which he swore to
your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you, with great
and goodly cities, which you did not build, and houses full of all good
things, which you did not fill, and cisterns hewn out, which you did not
hew, and vineyards and olive trees, which you did not plant, and when
you eat and are full, then take heed lest you forget the Lord, who brought
you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall fear
the Lord your God .. .lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled
against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth (Deut. 6.10-
15; cf. 6.18-19).
Yahweh's role in the conquest would be vital:
When Yahweh your God brings you into the land that you are about to
enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you-the
Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the
Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous
than you-and when Yahweh your God gives them over to you and you
defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with
them and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them ... for that
would turn away your children from following me, to serve other gods.
Then the anger of Yahweh would be kindled against you, and he would
destroy you quickly ... Break down their altars, smash their pillars, hew
down their sacred poles, and burn their idols with fire. For you are a
people holy to Yahweh your God; Yahweh your God has chosen you out
of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession ... It
was because Yahweh loved you ... that Yahweh has brought you out with
a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the
hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. .. Therefore, observe diligently the com-
mandment-the statutes, and the ordinances-that I am commanding you
today (Deut. 7.1-11 ).
As they prepare to enter the land, Moses gives more instructions:
'Hear, 0 Israel! You are about to cross the Jordan today, to go in and dis-
possess nations larger and mightier than you ... Know then today that
Yahweh your God is the one who crosses over before you as a devouring
fire; he will defeat them and subdue them before you, so that you may
dispossess and destroy them quickly ... When Yahweh your God thrusts
them out before you, do not say to yourself, "It is because of my righ-
teousness that Yahweh has brought me in to occupy this land"; it is rather
because of the wickedness of these nations that Yahweh is dispossessing
them before you .. .in order to fulfil the promise that Yahweh made on oath
to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob' (Deut. 9.1-5).
27
He reminds the people of the apostasy at Horeb (Deut. 9.8-29), and
invites them to keep the entire commandment, so that they may have
strength to occupy the land and live long in it (Deut. 11.8-9; cf.
11.31-32). If they do so, Yahweh will drive out all the nations, whom
they will dispossess (Deut. 11.23). The territory shall extend from the
wilderness to the Lebanon, and from the Euphrates to the Western Sea
(Deut. 11.24). Deut. 12.1-26.12 gives the details of the Law by which
they are to live. They must demolish the shrines of the indigenous
people, break down their altars, hew down the idols of their gods and
thus blot out their name from their places (Deut. 12.2-3). They shall
bring everything that Yahweh commanded to the place he would
choose as a dwelling for his name (Deut. 12.11 ). Imitation or syn-
cretism is ruled out (Deut. 12.29-30), and their promoters are to be
stoned (Deut. 13.10). Distortion is to be avoided:('Justice, and only
justice, you shall pursue, so that you may live and occupy the land that
Yahweh your God is giving you' (Deut. 16.20).1
In the rules for the conduct of war (Deut. 20.1-21.14 ), the priest
makes it clear that it is Yahweh who gives the victory (Deut. 20.4).
When a besieged town surrenders, all its inhabitants shall serve at
forced labour; if not, they shall kill all its males and take as booty the
women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the town
(Deut. 20.11-14).
'But as for the towns of these peoples that Yahweh your God is giving
you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain
alive. You shall annihilate them-the Hittites and the Amorites, the
Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites-just as
Yahweh your God has commanded, so that they may not teach you to do
all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and you thus sin
against Yahweh your God' (Deut. 20.16-18).
The fruit-bearing trees, however, are to be spared, as is a captive
'beautiful woman whom you desire and want to marry' (Deut. 21.11).
Miscellaneous laws follow (Deut. 21.15-23.1), and then humanitar-
ian and cultic laws (Deut. 23.2-25.19). The first fruits are to be offered,
to the accompaniment of the 'cultic credo' (Deut. 26.6-10). Reitera-
tion of keeping the law follows (Deut. 27 .1-26), and blessings and
curses (Deut. 28.1-69). Moses makes the covenant and warns the
people that uprooting from the land would befall apostasy (Deut.
29.13-29). But if the exiled people remember the blessings and the
curses and return to Yahweh, he would restore their fortunes and
gather in the exiles from the ends of the world (Deut. 30.3-5). The two
ways are put clearly before the people: if they obey the commandments
of Yahweh they shall thrive in the land; if not, they shall not live long
in the land (Deut. 30.15-20).
The remainder of the book deals with the Last Will and Testament
of Moses, and his commissioning of Joshua, who would lead the
people across the Jordan (Deut. 31.3-6). Moses reiterated the message
to Joshua, and was given a premonition of his death and of the apos-
tasy of the people (Deut. 31.16-21). Then he recited the words of a
song, which alternated between the praise of God for his benevolence
and the litany of the infidelities of the people, adding the customary
warning against future disobedience (Deut. 32.1-43). Remaining in the
land was conditional on observance of 'all the words of this law'
(Deut. 32.46-47). J3efore he was to die, Moses ascended Mount Nebo
at Yahweh's command to be given a view of the land from a distance
(Deut. 32.52). Chapter 33 gives Moses' deathbed poem, detailing the
favours of Yahweh (vv. 27-29).
The book ends with Moses' sight of the Promised Land: Gilead as
far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the
land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, the Negeb, and the valley of
Jericho, the city of palm trees-as far as Zoar (Deut. 34.1-3). Then
Moses died and 'was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite
Beth-pear, but no one knows his burial place to this day' (v. 6). He
was 120 years old when he died. Joshua was full of the spirit of wisdom,
because Moses had laid his hands on him. Although Moses was
unequalled in his deeds, he left a worthy successor (Deut. 34.4-12).
The Land in the Book of Joshua
The book presents its hero, Joshua, as the divinely chosen and worthy
successor of Moses (Josh. 1), who, in many respects, is a carbon copy
of him. He is destined to complete the work of Moses by leading the
people into the land, wherein they will observe the commands as
a condition of remaining there. The first major part (2.1-12.24)
describes in epic style the conquest of the land, concentrating on the
capture of a few key cities and their treatment in accordance with the
laws of the Holy War. Then we have the division of the land (13.1-
21.45), followed by an appendix (22.1-24.33).
After the death of Moses, Yahweh spoke to Joshua assuring him that
he had given him as he promised to Moses: from the wilderness and
the Lebanon as far as the Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, to the
Great Sea in the west (Josh. 1.1-4 ). The spies Joshua sent to Jericho
reported back that all the inhabitants of the land melted in fear before
them (Josh. 1.24). The crossing of the Jordan is described in Josh.
3.1-5.1, followed by the ceremonies at Gilgal (Josh. 5.2-12) and the
destruction of Jericho (Josh. 5.13-6.27). After the seventh (ritual)
procession of the Ark around the walls of the city on the seventh day,
the wall fell down flat at the sound of the trumpets and the great shout
(Josh. 6.20). The city and all that was in it, with the exception of
Rahab and her house, would be devoted to Yahweh for destruction
(herem) (Josh. 6.17). The slaughter of all the men and women, oxen,
sheep and donkeys, and the burning of the city followed, sparing only
the silver and gold, etc. for the treasury of the house of Yahweh, and
Rahab's family. Joshua pronounced a curse on anyone who tries to
rebuild Jericho (Josh. 6.21-27). In the first show of Israelite infidelity,
Achan took some of the devoted things.
The first attack on Ai was repulsed, because of Israel's (A chan's) sin
(Josh. 7.11). The culprit was stoned to death and the confiscated booty
burned (Josh. 7.25-26). The marauding party moved on to Ai at
Yahweh's command to do to it what was done to Jericho: no one of
the 12,000 inhabitants survived or escaped, and Joshua burned it and
made it forever a heap of ruins, as it is to this day (Josh. 8.2, 19-29).
The liturgical Te Deum and reading of the Law followed in style,
with one choir on Mount Gerizim and the other on Mount Ebal (Josh.
8.30-35).
The ravaging troops of Joshua and Israel were to be met with a
concerted defence of the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the
Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites (Josh. 9.1-2). But the inhabi-
tants of Gibeon, due to their cunning and deceit, were, in virtue of a
treaty, to be spared the conditions of the ban (herem). They were des-
tined to become 'hewers of wood and drawers of water for all the
congregation' (Josh. 9.21, 23, 27). The elders complained at this lapse
in fidelity to the mandate to destroy all the inhabitants of the land
(Josh. 9.24).
The next two chapters give details of the shift in the theatre of
marauding. Chapter 10 describes the campaign in the south, and
ch. 11 that in the north, in each case, assuring the rigorous enforce-
ment of the ban. Chapter 10 describes how King Adoni-zedek of
Jerusalem, with King Hoham of Hebron, King Piram of Jarmuth,
King Japhia of Lachish and King Debir of Eglon made war against
Gibeon. The Gibeonites appealed to Joshua, who inflicted a great
slaughter on the kings' forces at Gibeon. Those who escaped were
killed by huge stones from heaven, hurled by the divine stone-
thrower. Joshua commanded the sun to stand still at Gibeon, and the
moon in the valley of Aijalon (Josh. 10.12-13). Later, Joshua struck
down the five kings, who had been hiding in the cave at Makkedah,
and put them to death. In conformity with the rules of the Holy War,
Joshua took Makkedah and utterly destroyed every person in it (Josh.
10.28). A similar fate befell Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron and
Debir (Josh. 10. 29-39). The author summarizes Joshua's destruction
of everything that breathed, from Kadesh-barnea to Gaza and so forth
as Yahweh commanded (Josh. 10. 40-43).
Chapter 11 describes the northern campaign, with the literary
account showing signs of a conscious parallel with ch. 10. There was a
coalition between King Jabin of Hazor, King Jobab of Madon, the king
of Shimron, the king of Achshaph, and the kings who were in the
northern hill country and the Arabah south of Chinneroth, and in the
lowland, and in Naphoth-dor on the west, the Canaanites in the east
and the west, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, and the
Jebusites in the hill country and the Hivites under Hermon in the land
of Mizpah (Josh. 11.1-3). However, they were no match for Joshua,
with Yahweh on his side. Israel struck them down until they had left
no one remaining (Josh. 11.7-9). To complete matters, Joshua turned
back and took Hazor, and killed its king and all who were in it, and
burned Hazor with fire (v. 11). The reader is given a resume of the
military campaign. Joshua took all that land (the Negeb, all the land of
Goshen, etc.), utterly destroying their inhabitants (Josh. 11.16-23 ).
Chapter 12 gives a full list of the kings defeated and the lands con-
quered, first under Moses on the east side of the Jordan (Josh. 12.1-6),
and then on the west (Josh. 12.7-24). Chapters 13-21 give an account
of the division of the land, which, although allegedly all conquered in
the account of chs. 1-12, gives most attention to the territory of the
later kingdom of Judah. The incompleteness of the conquest is reflec-
ted in the opening verses: 'Now Joshua was old and advanced in years;
and Yahweh said to him, "You are old and advanced in years, and
very much of the land still remains to be possessed. This is the land
that still remains ... "' (Josh. 13.1). The whole achievement is summed
up in that Yahweh gave to Israel all the land that he swore to their
ancestors that he would give them (Josh. 21.43-45). The appendices
complete the picture of the ideal Israel under the leadership of Joshua
(Josh. 22.1-24.33). The arrangements with the Reubenites, the Gadites
and the half-tribe of Manasseh are honoured, and the legitimate place
of worship (anticipating Shechem of ch. 24) is determined (Josh. 22.1-
34). There follows Joshua's farewell speech (Josh. 23), the covenant at
Shechem (Josh. 24.1-8) and the notes of the death and burial of
Joshua, Joseph and Eleazar (Josh. 24.29-33).
The Land in Other Books of the Bible
The book of Judges deals with the transition from the period of Joshua
to that of Saul. With the death of Joshua, the period of Moses comes to
a close, and with the advent of Saul we are prepared for the advent of
the age of David and the monarchy. The picture in the book of Judges
is considerably different from that recorded in the book of Joshua.
Whereas the book of Joshua gives details of the conquest in a series of
'punctiliar', efficient military activities, the book of Judges sees it as a
more complex and gradual phenomenon, punctuated by partial success
and failure. Apart from the references to them in Sir. 46.11-12 (and
in the New Testament, Heb. 11.32-34) there is little reference to the
Judges outside the Former Prophets.
The theme of land recurs in several other traditions within the
Bible. However, the evidence that these traditions were in circulation
before the exilic period is meagre. In the eighth-century Judean
prophets, Isaiah and Micah, we read only of the Midian story (Isa.
10.26). In the northern kingdom, we have a reference to the Amorites
in Amos 2.1 0, and a possible reference to the outrage at Gibeah in
Hosea 9.9. With respect to the celebration of the occupation of the
land within the cultic life of the community, there is little that one
would have to put earlier than the exile. While Ps. 65.9-13 lauds
Yahweh for his benevolence towards the land in general, Ps. 78.54-55
does so for his specific care of the Israelites:
And he brought them to his holy hill, to the mountain that his right hand
had won. He drove out nations before them; he apportioned them for a
possession and settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.
This theme is reiterated in other psalms:
So he brought his people out with joy, his chosen ones with singing. He
gave them the lands of the nations, and they took possession of the wealth
of the peoples (Ps. 105.43-44),
You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it
(Ps. 80.8),
33
However, the details of the conquest are inconsiderable. Psalm 114
does refer to the stopping of the flow of the Jordan, and Pss. 78.54-66
and 81.11-12 refer to the disobedience of Israel. However, there is no
reason to insist that these compositions pre-date the exile, or that they
were not derived from the books of Joshua and Judges.
There is a notable lack of evidence, therefore, for predicating a
popularity for the conquest and settlement traditions prior to the
period of the exile. In the exilic period, they assume an importance in
both Jeremiah and Ezekiel. However, neither in Jeremiah nor Ezekiel
is there specific reference to the land having been conquered by
Joshua and the Judges.
4
Moreover, there are no clear allusions to the
conquest and settlement traditions in Isaiah 40-55 or in the post-exilic
prophets. It is remarkable that, with the exception of their importance
within the deuteronomistic traditions, the conquest and settlement
traditions occupy such an insignificant place within the Bible (see
Bartlett 1990: 55).
5
Let us consider now how the biblical texts at face
value have been exploited in favour of colonial enterprises.
Exploitation of the Biblical Traditions on Land
The Bible enjoys unique authority within both Synagogue and Church.
The Torah emanates from heaven.
6
Since it contains the demands
4. The land was given to Israel's ancestors (Jer. 7.7) as a possession
(Jer. 32.22), or inheritance (Jer. 3.18). It was a land flowing with milk and honey
(Jer. 11.5; 32.22-23; Ezek. 20.6, 15) that Israel defiled (Jer. 2.7) through
disobedience (Jer. 32.23).
5. In the New Testament, Joshua's feat in driving out the nations is referred to
in Stephen's speech (Acts 7.45), and his achievement in Heb. 4.8. In the Patristic
period, Pseudo-Barnabas saw Moses' prayer with extended hands, interceding for
the victory of Joshua over the Amalekites as a 'typos' of the Cross and the Crucified
(12.2-3), and considered Joshua to be a figure of Christ (12.8-10). For Justin,
Joshua was a type of Christ: just as he led the people into the land of Canaan, so
Christ leads Christians into the true promised land (Dial. 113). Cyril of Alexandria
also interpreted the Pentateuch in a christological way, from Cain and Abel to
Joshua. Hilary too attached christological significance to Joshua (see Simonetti 1994:
14, 20, 33 n. 14, 79, 89).
6. At the heart of the differences in British Jewry between the United
Synagogue and the Masorti movement is the appropriate understanding of the
which God made on his people, a punctilious observance of its laws is
the supreme religious duty. Israelite piety was primarily directed
towards zealously and lovingly obeying the Torah in all its details
(Schi.irer 1979: 314). The Torah, in such an interpretation, must be
accepted in its totality, and in all its parts. The Bible enjoys a corre-
sponding authority in the Church as the Word of God (see Chapter 7).
However, the Bible poses a fundamental moral problem for anyone
who takes it at face value.
In the biblical narrative, the Hebrew slaves who left Egypt invaded\
a land already occupied. The occupation of another people's land
invariably involves systematic pillage and killing. What distinguishes
the biblical accounts of this activity, whether through the Blitzkrieg
mode represented in the book of Joshua, or through the more gradual
one reflected in the book of Judges, is that it is presented as having not
only divine approval, but as being mandated by the divinity. In the
book of Joshua, in particular, the Israelites killed in conformity with
the directives of God. This presentation of God as requiring the destruc-
tion of others poses problems for anyone who presumes that the con-
duct of an ethical God will not fall lower than decent, secular behaviour.
The commandment that, 'You shall devour all the peoples that
Yahweh your God is giving over to you, showing them no pity' (Deut.
7.16) is seen in a new light, when one recalls how such texts were
used in support of colonialism in several regions and periods, in
which the native peoples were the counterparts of the Hittites, the
Girgashites, and others. Were it not for their religious provenance,
such biblical sentiments would be regarded as incitements to racial
hatred/Prima facie, judged by the standards of ethics and human
rights tb which our society has become accustomed, the first six books
of the Hebrew Bible reflect some ethnocentric, racist and xenophobic
sentiments that appear to receive the highest possible legitimacy in the
form of divine approval. On moral grounds, one ts forced to question
rwhether the Torah continues to provide divine legitimacy for the
occupation of other people's land and the virtual annihilation of the
indigenes)
.
Hebrew Bible, especially the Pentateuch. Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks claims, 'An
individual who does not believe in Torah min haShamayim (i.e. that the Torah is
from heaven) has severed his links with the faith of his ancestors.' The Masorti
movement, on the other hand, takes seriously the results of critical biblical
scholarship.
------------------------------------
The Crusades provide a striking example of the link between reli-
gion and political power, and exemplify how the Bible has been
employed as an agent of oppression (see Prior 1995b). It is sufficient
here to indicate the kind of religious and theological thinking that was
presented as justifying such behaviour. The papal justification for vio-
lence can ~ traced back to the views of St Augustine, who appealed to
the Old Testament to show that God could duectly command 1t. War
waged in the name of God was a just war par excelience.JTo deny the
morality of divinely approved war was tantamount to denying divine
providence itself. Moreover, God would help those who fought
divinely approved wars, just as he had helped the Israelites to conquer
the Amorites. While Augustine's views were scattered throughout his
many writings, collections were compiled just before the First
Crusade (c. 1083 by St Anselm of Lucca; c. 1094 by Ivo of Chartres).
When Pope Urban II proclaimed the First Crusade at the Council of
Clermont on 27 November 1095, he called out soldiers for Christ's
war, guaranteeing them the remission of all their sins (Hagenmeyer
1901, in Riley-Smith 1981: 38). The four extant accounts of his
sermon reflect the combination of Christian piety, xenophobia and
imperialistic arrogance that characterizes many colonial ventures (see
Riley-Smith 1981: 43-44). The liberation of 'Jerusalem' from 'unclean
races', who, by their 'unclean practices treated dishonourably and
polluted irreverently the Holy Places', justified aggression from those
who were armed with both Testaments in one hand, a sword in the
other, and the cross on their front or breast, in compliance with the
Gospel exhortation, 'Whosoever does not carry his cross and come
after me is not worthy of me.'
But the link between the sword and the Cross was even more overt
in the establishment of military religious orders, 'monks of war'.
Hugues de Payens arrived in Syria in 1115, and by 1118 had become a
self-appointed protector of pilgrims (Seward 1995: 30). Together
with seven other knights, he made a solemn vow to protect pilgrims
and observe poverty, chastity and obedience. In 1126, he went back to
France and sought the support of Bernard of Clairvaux, who
promised to compose a rule for him and find recruits. For Bernard,
the Templars were military Cistercians:
There were two main meals, both eaten in silence with sacred reading
from a French translation of the Bible, special emphasis being placed on
the Books of Joshua and the Maccabees. All found inspiration in the
ferocious exploits of Judas, his brothers and their war-bands in recon-
quering the Holy Land from cruel infidels (Seward 1995: 32).
The knights saw no inconsistency between the two aspects of their
ideals, to fight for Christ and to pray. lfhey followed St Bernard's
judgment that 'killing for Christ' was malecide, that is, the extermina-
tion of injustice, and not homicide, the extermination of the unjust.
Indeed, to kill a pagan was to win glory, since it gave glory to Christ!
Other orders, for example, the Hospitallers, placed more emphasis on
the service of the sick, but it has been said of even them that 'when
they had received the Body of the Lord they fought like devils'
(Seward 1995: 40). Death in battle was martyrdom, and it is estimated
that some 20,000 achieved that desired status in their various military
activities for Christ over the next two centuries (Seward 1995: 35).
The Bible and 'Catechesis': A Case Study
What effect does the biblical text have in contributing to the formation
of values and ethical principles? Eager to estimate the influence of
ethnic and religious prejudice on moral judgment, the Israeli socio-
psychologist Georges R. Tamarin investigated the effect of chauvinism
on moral judgment. He surveyed the presence of prejudices in the
ideology of Israeli youth and the effect of an uncritical teaching of the
Bible on the propensity for forming prejudices (1963). He was par-
ticularly anxious to evaluate the degree to which uncritical teaching of
notions of the 'chosen people', the superiority of monotheistic reli-
gion, and the study of acts of genocide carried out by biblical heroes
contributed to the development of prejudice.
Tamarin chose the book of Joshua because of its special position in
the Israeli educational system, both as national history and as one of
the cornerstones of Israel's national mythology. He divided his sample
into two groups, the main group, and a second, control group. He
asked the main group to comment: 'You are well acquainted with the
following passages of the Book of Joshua':
So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the
people heard the sound of the trumpets, they raised a great shout, and the
wall fell down flat; so the people charged straight ahead into the city and
captured it. Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all
in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and
donkeys (Josh. 6.20-21).
Joshua took Makkedah on that day, and struck it and its king with the
edge of the sword; he utterly destroyed every person in it; he left no one
remaining. And he did to the king of Makkedah as he had done to the king
of Jericho. Then Joshua passed on from Makkedah, and all Israel with
him, to Libnah, and fought against Libnah. Yahweh gave it also and its
king into the hand of Israel; and he struck it with the edge of the sword,
and every person in it; he left no one remaining in it; and he did to its king
as he had done to the king of Jericho. Next Joshua passed on from
Libnah, and all Israel with him, to Lachish, and laid siege to it, and
assaulted it. Yahweh gave Lachish into the hand of Israel, and he took it
on the second day, and struck it with the edge of the sword, and every
person in it, as he had done to Libnah (Josh. 10.28-32).
37
He surveyed nine groups of pupils, ranging from 8.5 to 14 years of
age, covering a wide spectrum (schools in cities, villages, a Moshav,
two Kibbutzim, a religious school, a youth centre and an heteroge-
neous group from different schools). He asked:
Q 1 Do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted rightly or not?
Explain why you think as you do.
Q 2 Suppose that the Israeli army conquers an Arab village in
battle. Do you think it would be good or bad to act towards
the inhabitants as Joshua did towards the people of Jericho
and Makkedah? Explain why.
In calculating the responses, Tamarin distinguished between total
approval of the genocide, partial approval and total disapproval.
7
The
result can be presented as follows:
Attitudes towards Joshua and the Israeli Army
%total %partial %total
ap_proval ap_proval disap_proval
Q.l. Attitudes to Joshua 66 8 26
Q.2. Attitudes to Israeli army
and Arab village 30 8 62
7. The small number of confused or irrelevant responses were not included in
the computation. Tamarin draws attention to three answers in the 'total disapproval'
category, which, nevertheless, betrayed discriminatory attitudes. One criticized
Joshua's act, stating that 'the Sons of Israel learned many bad things from the
Goyim.' Another rejected it, on the basis that the Bible says, 'Don't kill', yet
approved of the action in the second question, stating, 'I think it would be good, as
we want our enemies to fall into our hands, enlarge our frontiers, and kill the Arabs
as Joshua did.' A third, a ten-year-old girl disapproved of Joshua's action, stating, 'I
think it is not good, since the Arabs are impure and if one enters an impure land one
will also become impure and share the curse' (Tamarin 1973: 187).
Tamarin concluded that this showed the existence of a highly preju-
diced attitude among a considerable number of the respondents, justi-
fying discriminatory tendencies (religious, racial-nationalist, strategic
justification of the extermination, etc.). He divided the control group
into two sub-groups. The first received the text from Joshua, and was
asked to answer only Question 1. The second sub-group was given the
following 'Chinese version' of the book of Joshua:
General Lin, who founded the Chinese Kingdom 3000 years ago, went to
war with his army to conquer a land. They came to some great cities with
high walls and strong fortresses. The Chinese War-God appeared to
General Lin in his dream and promised him victory, ordering him to kill
all living souls in the cities, because those people belonged to other reli-
gions. General Lin and his soldiers took the towns and utterly destroyed
all that was therein, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and
sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword. After destroying the cities,
they continued on their way, conquering many countries.
He asked this sub-group, 'Do you think that General Lin and his sol-
diers acted rightly or not? Explain why.'
The result of the control sub-groups can be presented as follows:
Attitudes towards the genocide
% total %partial % total
approval approval disapproval
By Joshua 60 20 20
By General Lin 7 18 75
fTamarin interpreted this result as proving unequivocally the influence\
~ chauvinism and nationalist-religious prejudices on moral judgmentj
(1973: 187-88).
Tamarin's analysis of the answers revealed that, among others,
The uncritical teaching of the Bible-to students too young-even if not
taught explicitly as a sacred text, but as national history or in a quasi-
neutral atmosphere concerning the real or mythological character of its
content, no doubt profoundly affects the genesis of prejudices ... even
among non-religious students, in accentuating the negative-hostile char-
acter of the strangers ... The overestimation of statehood as a supreme
value and the idea that assimilation is the greatest evil, and the influences
of militaristic values in ideological education, are further sources of dis-
criminatory tendencies (1973: 189).
(
Tamarin concluded that the findings were a severe indictment of the
Israeli educational system, and an invitation to those responsible to
learn from them. His research brought him unsought and unexpected
notoriety-the matter being called the Tamarin Affair-and led to his
losing his professorship in Tel Aviv University. In a letter to the senate
of the university he wrote that he had never dreamt that he would
become the last victim of Joshua's conquest of Jericho (1973: 190).
The Bible, Peace and Colonialism
Discussion among biblical scholars and theologians on the subject of
the settlement of the children of Israel in Canaan in antiquity, and of
Jews in Palestine in modern times, is distinguished by its neglect of
consideration for the inhabitants of the region prior to those occupa-
tions. The discourse in each case deals with such topics as the land as
God's gift, or, the possession of the land as the fulfilment of God's
contractual agreement with the people of Israel. And yet, as Arnold
Toynbee notes, it was the same 'biblically recorded conviction of the
Israelites that God had instigated them to exterminate the
that sanctioned the British conquest of North America. Ireland and
Australia, the Dutch conquest of South Africa, the Prussian conquest
of Poland and the Zionist conquest of Palestine (1954: 310). The
absence of concern for 'the natives' reflects the deeply ingrained Euro-
centric, colonialist prejudice which characterizes virtually all histo-
riography, as well as the discipline of biblical studies (see Whitelam
1996 passim).
Nevertheless, liberation theologians from virtually every region
(Latin America, South Africa, South Korea, the Philippines, etc.) have
appropriated the Exodus story in their long and tortuous struggle
against colonialism, imperialism and dictatorship. Readers of the bib-
lical narrative are easily impressed and consoled by that story's
capacity to lift the spirits of the oppressed/However, one's perspective
on the Exodus story takes on a different complexion when read with
the eyes of the 'Canaanites', that is, of any of several different cul-
tures, which have been victims of a colonialism fired by religious
imperialism, whether of the Indians in North or Latin America, the
Maoris in New Zealand, the Aborigines in Australia, the Khoikhoi and
San in southern Africa or the Palestinians in Palestine.) I
The Palestinian liberation theologian, Canon Nairn Ateek, poses the
problematic in a striking fashion, since in his region, above all others,
the applicability of the Exodus paradigm appears most natural.
8
8. I discuss further the Exodus paradigm in Chapter 7.
Before the creation of the State [oflsrael], the Old Testament was consid-
ered to be an essential part of Christian Scripture, pointing and witnessing
to Jesus. Since the creation of the State, some Jewish and Christian inter-
preters have read the Old Testament largely as a Zionist text to such an
extent that it has become almost repugnant to Palestinian Christians ... The
fundamental question of many Christians, whether uttered or not, is:
'How can the Old Testament be the Word of God in the light of the
Palestinian Christians' experience with its use to support Zionism?'
(Ateek 1991: 283).
The Chinese theologian, Kwok Pui-lan, confesses to having no answer
to this question, and poses two further questions, 'Where is the prom-
ised land now? ... Can I believe in a God who killed the Canaanites
and who seems not to have listened to the cry of the Palestinians now
for some forty years?' (Kwok 1995: 99). She cautions that one must
be careful not to identify the promised land with one's homeland, and
even more so with somebody else's homeland.
( The Bible, commonly looked to as the supreme source-book of lib-
{ eration, has functioned as a charter for oppression, both in the past
and the present. Understandably, the symbiotic relationship between
the political and religious discourses is most focused in the case of
Zionism and Palestine. If other peoples can apply the biblical para-
digm of conquest and plunder by recourse to claims to analogous
'rights', the rights of Jews are accorded canonical and unique status
and are warmly supported in the West. The religious-political link
was illustrated dramatically on 13 September 1993, when President
Clinton introduced Prime Minister Rabin and President Arafat on the
White House lawn. He announced to the world that both people
pledged themselves to a shared future 'shaped by the values of the
Torah, the Koran, and the Bible'. According to a report in the
Washington Post, the President, fearing that his speech required more
work, had not been able to sleep on the night before the signing. He
woke at 3.00 a.m. and reread the entire book of Joshua and portions
of the New Testament (Prior 1994c: 20). His mode of address later in
the day was a mixture of Bible-based exhortation in the Baptist tradi-
tion and shrewd political manoeuvring. The late Premier Rabin's
speech also referred to the Bible. However, in the light of history one
must question whether the values of the Torah, the Koran and the
Bible can be relied upon to promote justice and peace, and underpin
the imperatives of human rights.
Another President of the USA had to deal with the conflict between
the dictates of human rights and the imperatives of the biblical para-
digm. When President Carter shocked American Christian evangelical
fundamentalists and charismatics with his concern for human rights,
and used the words 'Palestinian homeland' in a speech in March 1977,
full-page advertisements, signed by prominent evangelicals, appeared
throughout the USA, for example,
The time has come for evangelicals to affirm their belief in biblical
prophecy and Israel's divine right to the Holy Land ('Evangelicals'
Concern for Israel', Paid Advertisement, the Christian Science Monitor, 3
November 1977).
With the USA Protestant churches beginning to champion third world
countries and supporting the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),
the pro-Israeli lobby targeted the 50-60 million American evangeli-
cals. (televangelist Pat Robertson later interpreted the 1982 Israeli
invasion of Lebanon according to the end-time fulfilment of biblical
prophecy. Israel's attack was a modern Joshua event. He urged Ameri-
can viewers to phone President Reagan offering encouragement to
Israel's war (O'Neill and Wagner 1993: 84). Meanwhile, in Lebanon,
Rabbi Schlomo Riskin, who followed the army to study the Talmud
with the troops, was deeply impressed by the fact that the soldiers,
when resting from battle, spent long hours discussing whether it
would be right to pick Lebanese cherries (see Bermant 1994).
While the biblical paradigm is unacceptable in our time as a
justification for murder, it does enjoy the support of a strong body of
opinion within religious circles in Israel. When Dr Baruch Goldstein,
a graduate of the most prestigious yeshiva in the USA, massacred 29
worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron (25 February 1994),
there was widespread revulsion. Even advocates of the Torah-from-
Heaven expressed shock at the unspeakably evil act of violence against
those engaged in worship. Nevertheless, one asks what distinguishes
this kind of behaviour from that presented as divinely mandated in
some of the traditions of the Torah, and from the appropriation of
those traditions by different forms of colonialism and imperialism?
One wonders to what extent the book of Deuteronomy, the book of
Joshua, and, in particular, the book of Esther, the prescribed reading
for the feast of Purim, which occurred on that day, may have
contributed to the world view of Dr Goldstein.
9
His actions were
9. Robert Carroll reflects upon the possible effect on Mark Chapman, the
supported by some Zionists who lean heavily on a literalist reading of
the biblical text (see Prior 1994c).
Sadly, Prime Minister Rabin left this particularly loathsome form
of applied biblical hermeneutics unchecked. By a sad irony, Rabin
himself was gunned down at a Tel Aviv peace rally on 4 November
1995. In the first hearing of his case, Yigal Amir explained that he
derived his motivation from halakhah. Already on the eve of Yom
Kippur just weeks before the assassination, a group of Jewish kabbal-
ists stationed themselves before Premier Rabin's house, put on tefillin,
lit black candles, blew the shofar, cursed him with the pulsa denura
(lashes of fire) and intoned:
And on him, Yitzhak, son of Rosa, known as Rabin, we have permis-
sion ... to demand from the angels of destruction that they take a sword to
this wicked man ... to kill him ... for handing over the Land of Israel to our
enemies, the sons of Ishmael (Jewish Chronicle, 10 November 1995,
p. 27).
British Chief Rabbi Sacks invited the Orthodox rabbinate to question
whether they were really teaching Jewish values: the Torah was given
'not to wreak vengeance, but to create kindness, compassion and
peace'. He went on to stress that it is 'people of religious conviction
who must most forcibly defend the democratic process. We must
absolutely-as a matter of Jewish principle-reject utterly the lan-
guage of hate' (Jewish Chronicle, 10 November 1995, p. 56). Whether
Rabbi Sacks owes more to the ideals of Enlightenment philosophy than
to that particular form of Orthodox Judaism which reads the biblical
text in a literalist way is not clear. Amir's five-month trial ended on
27 March 1996. On the day of his conviction and sentencing, he
calmly assured the court, 'Everything I did, I did for the Torah of
Israel, for the land of Israel'. His actions, he said, were guided by God
and by the Jewish law. It was unforgivable for a Jew to give up part
of the God-given land of Israel, he insisted. Asked if he had anything
to say, Amir answered, 'I had no choice but to commit this act even
though it ran against the grain of my personality, because the damage
to the people of Israel is irreversible ... I committed this act and I am
willing to pay the price' (Derek Brown, The Guardian, 28 March
murderer of Beatie John Lennon, of reading about and meditating on Holden
Caulfield: 'Some reading of The Catcher in the Rye! Books can kill-no, readers of
books do the killing; books can inspire people to kill other people' (1991: 115).
1996). The judge tried to cut Amir short several times in the course
of his five-minute speech, which he, looking at the judge, concluded
with, 'May God help you'.
With respect to biblical hermeneutics, Goldstein and Amir are
merely the tip of the iceberg of literalism, which justifies outrages on
the basis of an alleged divine mandate. Constant exposure to a literalist
interpretation of the Torah, whether in the curriculum of Israeli
schools, or through some of the many schools of biblical and talmudic
learning, avoids with difficulty descent into attitudes of racism, xeno-
phobia and militarism (see Newman 1985). Moreover, there is abun-
dant evidence, especially in traditions of imperialist colonialism
emanating from so-called Christian countries, for appeal to sacred
writings to justify inhumane behaviour.
10
Reading the Bible with the Eyes of Canaanites
Contemporary liberation theologies look to the Bible for their under-
pinning. It is not difficult to discern a range of themes which fit the
concept of liberation very comfortably (for example, liberation from
oppression in Egypt, Babylon, etc.). However, does not a consistent
reading of the biblical text require the liberating God of the Exodus to
become the oppressive God of the occupation of Canaan? The problem
is held in sharp relief in the comment of a North American Indian:
'The obvious characters for Native Americans to identify with are the
Canaanites, the people who already lived in the promised land ... I
read the Exodus stories with Canaanite eyes' (Warrior 1991: 289).
Literary sources reflecting the experience of those displaced in
antiquity are not available. We do not have the laments of the sup-
planted peoples, nor have we independent accounts of whatever dis-
ruption was entailed. In surveying the role of the Bible and theology
in the furtherance of colonial and imperialistic enterprises one is
aware of examples from so many regions and diverse periods of his-
tory which would illustrate the process. I have chosen to focus on
three regions, from different periods, in which each colonialist ideol-
ogy gained the support of a distinctive religious ideology. I choose the
invasion of Latin America in the fifteenth century, the Afrikaner
incursion into the Cape Colony of southern Africa in 1652 and its
10. My academic competence requires me to leave to others the urgent task of
discussing the morality of the atrocities which are presented as deriving from a literal-
ist exegesis of the sacred texts of other religions.
sequel in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and Zionist settler-
colonialism of Palestine in this century. I leave it to others to deal
with any other selection of a veritable panoply of examples from the
range of imperialist enterprises.
In each region, the effects of the foundational injustice perdure: of
the European incursion into Latin America, Aiban W agua concludes,
'They set fire to the trunk, and the tree is still painfully burning'
(1990: 48).
The legacy of apartheid includes the fact that South Africa has the
greatest recorded inequality of any country of the world, with two-
thirds of the black population surviving below a defined minimum
level, and 9 million people completely destitute. The black people of
South Africa recognize the central position which the Bible occupied
in their colonization, national oppression and exploitation.
Paradoxically, as converts to Christianity, the religion of their con-
querors, they embraced the Bible, the textbook of their exploitation.
However, accordingly as they encounter the Bible being used in sup-
port of unjust causes, they realize that the book itself is a serious
problem for people in search of freedom. Many young South African
blacks consider the Bible to be an oppressive document by its very
nature and its very core, and even call for its displacement.
Religious and theological comment on contemporary developments
in Palestine is substantial, but that reflecting a moral sensitivity to the
underside of the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel, namely the
disruption of the indigenous Arab population of Palestine is modest.
Biblically- and theologically-based discussion concerning this region is
singularly deficient in its interest in those issues with which human
rights and humanitarian bodies concern themselves. This is not only
surprising but alarming, since biblical scholars and theologians in
virtually every other arena inform their discussions with a sensitivity
to the victims of oppression. What is celebrated by Israeli Jews as the
War of Independence of 1948, and by many Jews and some Christians
as the fulfilment of biblical prophecy, is for Palestinians Al-Nakba
(The Catastrophe), which involved the expulsion of the majority of
the Palestinian population in creating the State of Israel. Restoration
of the Israelite 'divinely ordained right', and 'fulfilment of biblical
prophecy' was followed by great suffer!ng in the region, including
further wars in 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982, and substantial military
aggression in Lebanon in 1993 and 1996.
Until recently both Jewish and Christian scholars of the Bible have
neglected the theme of the land. While we may never account for the
relative academic silence in the past, the reasons for the recent interest
are not difficult to discover. However, when one engages in a moral
consideration of modem events in Palestine one trespasses on a virtual
academic no-go area. The view that the Bible provides the title deed
for the establishment of the modem state of Israel and for its policies
since 1948 is so pervasive, not only in both Christian Zionist and
Jewish Zionist circles but even within mainstream Christian theology
and university biblical studies, that the very attempt to discuss the
issue is sure to encounter opposition. On the other hand, there is an
extensive library of 'secular' documentation on Israel and the
Occupied Territories, but this discourse is conducted against a back-
g r ~ u n of intemationaf law and the various pnnciples and directives
concerning human rights, with reference to overtly reli-
gwus or eo ogical concerns. This state of affairs is partly under-
st<ffidable, given that academic practitioners of international law and
human rights discourse could not reasonably be expected to be secure
also in biblical and theological learning. However, since virtually all
students of the Middle East acknowledge, if only by way of perfunc-
tory rhetoric, the significance of the religious or theological involve-
ment in the region, such an academic lacuna is unacceptable.
I shall discuss the religious element in the ideology which propelled
the European colonization of Latin America. I shall investigate how
the biblical paradigm served the interests of an evolving Afrikaner
nationalism, as it sought to advance its policies of 'separate develop-
ment'. Finally, I shall investigate the religious motivation which was
peripheral to, but residual in Zionism, and which became critical after
the 1967 War. As I examine each of the three regions in tum I shall
pay particular attention to the role of theology and biblical interpreta-
tion in supporting the social and political transformation in each place.
Many theologians sensitive to issues of human rights, especially
those whose traditions depend heavily on the Bible, face a dilemma.
(While they revere the sacred text, they see how it has been used as an
instrument of oppression. They seek refuge in the view that it is the
misuse of the Bible rather than the text of the Bible itself which is the
problem. The blame is shifted from the non-problematic biblical text
To the e(ver e redis ositions of the biblical interpreter. This 'solu-
tion' evades the pro.hlem. Examples from the past an t e present
indicate the pervasiveness, the persistence and the moral seriousness of
the question. The ones I shall examine are from different periods of
history, different regions, and different traditions of biblical herme-
neutics, and highlight some of the moral problems at the heart of the
Bible itself. It will be seen that several traditions within the Bible lend
themselves to oppressive interpretations and applications precisely
because of their inherently oppressive nature.
Part II
COLONIAL APPROPRIATIONS OF THE LAND TRADITIONS
Chapter 2
COLONIALISM AND LATIN AMERICA
To let their flower live
they damaged and swallowed up our flower.
That is how a Mayan poet assessed the European 'discovery' of
America (in Beozzo 1990: 88). Faced with the inevitable quincenten-
nial celebration of the 'discovery', Aiban Wagua, a Kuna Indian from
Panama and a Catholic priest, reminds readers that there are two
names, Abia Yala and America, and two histories, kuna history (that
of the indigenous peoples, who continue the struggle for survival) and
uaga history (that written by foreigners). And what have the indige-
nous people to celebrate?
For indigenous history it is a question of whether it is possible or not to
celebrate the marginalization, the violence, the genocide or ethnocide per-
petrated against our indigenous communities of Abia Yala. We indigenous
people know that we can only celebrate our resistance, our indomitable
will to go on living in spite of the darkness around us (Wagua 1990: 49).
Let us recall first the events as seen from Europe.
12 October 1492: The 'Discovery'
1
of America and its Cost
Immediately after their defeat of the Muslims in Grenada in 1492,
Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile pledged their support for
Christopher Columbus, who with 3 ships and 90 men sighted an island
I. Already by 1535, Columbus's 'discovery' was being treated by G. Fernandez
de Oviedo, Emperor Charles's official 'Chronicler of the Indies', not as the discov-
ery of new lands, but as the recovery of Hesperides, the ancient kingdom of the
legendary Hispanic king Hesperos (Historia general y natural de las lndias, bk II,
ch. 3). The new lands, then, were not conquered, captured, or invaded, but justly
redeemed from lapse into forgetfulness (Kadir 1992: 132).
2. Colonialism and Latin America 49
in the chain we call the Bahamas on 12 October 1492. He landed on
what we call El Salvador. Further exploration revealed Hispaniola
and Cuba. Columbus found gold and a docile Arawak population on
Hispaniola, and, believing he had arrived in Asia, he dubbed the
Arawaks 'Indians'. After the Santa Marfa struck a reef and was
wrecked, 39 of the sailors stayed behind, while the Nina and the Pinta
returned to Spain in early 1493.
Columbus's achievement created great excitement in Europe, and
the gold he procured in Hispaniola was enough to ensure a warm
reception when he met Isabella in Barcelona in 1493. In line with
mediaeval custom, and following on the precedent set by the Portu-
guese, they petitioned Pope Alexander VI for title to the newly-
discovered lands. The Pope acceded in a bull of 3 May 1493. Later
that year, in order to prevent disputes between Spain and Portugal, the
Pope drew an imaginary north-south Line of Demarcation, some
563 kilometres west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands. East of
that line belonged to Portugal, and west to Castile. In the Treaty of
Tordesillas (1494), these two countries agreed on a more equitable
distribution which moved the north-south line some 2084 kilometres
west. Portugal took possession of its area, Brazil, in 1500, with the
arrival of Pedro Alvares Cabral on the east coast. Columbus made
a number of expeditions to the region (1492-93, 1493-96, 1498-
1500, 1502-1504), and other expeditions followed his discovery. The
settlements in Hispaniola and the other islands of the Greater Antilles
in the period 1492-1519 prepared the colonists for the advance to the
mainland.
The Cost of the 'Discovery'
The original inhabitants of the region came to North America from
Asia between 40,000 and 25,000 BC, crossing the land bridge now
called the Bering Strait, which separates Alaska from Siberia.
Archaeological evidence suggests that from about 10,000 BC human
societies were present in the central highlands of Mexico, Central
America and the high valleys of the Andes, while some areas of the
Caribbean Basin and the plains of South America were occupied less
than two thousand years before the arrival of Columbus. The regions
contain evidence of the dawn of agriculture and the emergence of
sophisticated civilizations. By 1492 the indigenous population is esti-
mated to have been between 35 and 45 million, in a mosaic of tribal
groups, including the Aztecs, Incas, Araucasians, Arawaks, Caribs,
Chibchas, and others (Burkholder and Johnson 1994: 3). The indige-
nous population developed highly sophisticated cultures (Olmec,
Maya, Toltec, Aztec, Inca, etc.). The conquest of the Indians followed
soon after the European discovery of the region.
Columbus returned in late 1493, this time with 1500 men, including
seamen, officials and religious with clear settlement intentions. The set-
tlers began to enslave the natives and demand tribute. The Spaniards
devised the encomienda system, whereby colonists were granted vast
tracts of land and the possession of the Indians living on them, which
became a major instrument of colonization on the mainland. In return,
the colonists were charged to protect the Indians and convert them
to Catholicism, and teach them the rudiments of faith and the superior
virtues of European civilization (see Harrison 1993: 106). The
encomienda Indians on Hispaniola were forcibly moved to the gold
fields, and were subjected to outrageous demands for food, labour
and, in the case of women, sexual favours. Various forms of com-
pulsory labour, including slavery, were employed, and when the stock
of Indian slaves dried up, they were replaced by Africans. The
Arawaks, weakened by harsh working conditions, an altered diet and
the onset of disease (particularly smallpox, which reached the island in
1519), began to decline in number, with the result that the approxi-
mately one million inhabitants had virtually disappeared by the mid-
sixteenth century (Burkholder and Johnson 1994: 28).
By 1509 the gold reserves of Hispaniola were running out, and new
sources were sought elsewhere. Moreover, the decline in the native
population reduced the numbers available for forced labour, and the
Spanish population of some 10,000 sought slaves elsewhere. By 1519
they had devastated the Caribbean and much of Tierra Firme, but had
established the basis for colonial exploitation. The island phase of col-
onization was over and the conquest of the mainland was at hand
(Burkholder and Johnson 1994: 32-33). By the mid-1500s the Spanish
adventurers (the conquistadores), with the advantage of horses and
guns, had conquered the great Indian civilizations and given Spain
firm control of Latin America. Spanish and Portuguese settlers began
to pour into Latin America even before the conquest was completed.
They came in search of wealth, status and power. Not for the first
time, victorious Christians considered God to have supported their
cause, and they brought this assurance with them as they embarked on
the conquest of the Americas (Burkholder and Johnson 1994: 16-17).
The conquistadores came in noble style to live off the labour of
others. Naked pillage was their first strategy, whereby they stole the
entire wealth of the great empires of the Aztecs, the Incas, the
Chibchas, and others, after which they turned their attention to more
long-term goals, mining silver and gold and carving out for them-
selves great estates from the best Indian land. A continuous supply of
cheap and docile labour was essential. The most telling device was to
concentrate the Indian populations into congregaciones, or in Brazil
into aldeias or villages. Ostensibly, this was to facilitate the work of
evangelization, but in reality it was aimed at ensuring that the whites
could have their land.
2
Harrison traces present day inequality to the
primordial injustice of the European invasion (1993: 108).
Millions of Indians died in warfare, and of disease and overwork,
so that the colonists were obliged to bring slaves from Africa to make
up for the shortfall of labour. While there was some debate about the
morality of making Indians slaves, there was no debate, legal or theo-
logical, about the propriety of doing so for black Africans. It is esti-
mated that, over four centuries, in excess of 11 million slaves were
imported to the Americas from Africa.
3
The African slave trade pro-
vided the labour power that developed the plantation economies of
Brazil, Venezuela and the Caribbean. In other parts of Latin America
it was an important supplement to Indian labour. Manifestly, the insti-
tution of slavery enjoyed the combined support of church, state, the
nobility and public opinion.
Over the years Spain's economy became more and more dependent
on Latin America. Colonial rule lasted some 300 years, after which
time discontent grew in the colonies, influenced by the ideals of the
French Revolution and the Revolutionary War in America (1775-83),
leading ultimately to wars of independence. Mexico achieved indepen-
dence in 1821, followed by Central America in 1822, but the united
provinces of Central America began to dissolve in 1838, leading to the
independence of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and
Costa Rica by 1841. By 1824 the Spanish colonies in South America
2. As we shall see, corresponding patterns were applied in South Africa
(Bantustans) and Palestine (the areas under the Palestine National Authority, which
constitute only some 4 per cent of the land of the West Bank).
3. Some estimates are as high as 15 million (see Hurbon 1990: 91-93), and even
20 million (Richard 1990a: 59-60).
had wrested independence from Spain, and in 1822 Brazil declared
itself independent of Portugal.
4
Theological Underpinning: Mediaeval Christian Theology
European Christianity in the modem period shared the wider society's
prevailing attitude of domination, not only the domination of nature
but of alien races and cultures. The history of later European colo-
nization has its roots here, and the history of Europe's engagement
with Latin America also involved the culture of domination, with no
place for the recognition of the value of the Other. Religion and poli-
tics have been closely intertwined in Latin America since the
Conquest, providing ideological, material and institutional support and
legitimation to one another (Levine 1981: 3). From its first appear-
ance in the New World, the Catholic Church was an integral part of
the colonizing venture. It was one of its functions to oversee and
report on the conduct of the civil power (see Lockhart and Otte 1976:
203-207). The Mendicant Orders, especially the Franciscans, were
prominent in the whole colonizing enterprise with their establishment
of monasteries as centres of evangelization.
Moreover, there was no shortage of theological and biblical support
to provide ideological underpinning. Mediaeval Christian theologians
shared a common conception with Israelite theologians, involving a
radical sacralization of the state and all its institutions, including its
land. Both claimed that land was the gift of God, for the Israelites in
their time, and later for the Spanish and Portuguese in the New World
(see Padron 1975: 42). God's possession of the land included his polit-
ical sovereignty over all the territories of the earth (Lamadrid 1981:
329).
As in the Old Testament period, religion invaded every facet of life
in the Middle Ages. The majority of theologians and jurists considered
the Pope, as the vicar of Christ, to be sovereign of all the earth. The
papal bulls are to be viewed in the context of the theocratic conception
of the Middle Ages: the Pope was the Lord of the Earth, to whom
Christ confided all power, in heaven and on earth (Papa dominus
orbis). The bull Aeterni Regis of 1455 divided the New World, appor-
tioning newly discovered lands to Portugal. The Tractado de Alcm;oba
4. As in the USA, colonies wanted independence and freedom from slavery to
another country, but remained indifferent to enslavement within its own borders.
(1479) ceded to Portugal all the discovered territories in Africa, and
Pope Alexander VI's bull Inter cetera divina (1493) apportioned
colonies to Spain. The Catholic kings were authorized to engage in a
holy war which would implant the true faith in the regions of the
infidel (Lamadrid 1981: 337).
Columbus reflected the religious component of his motivation in the
dedicatory opening of his diary of the first voyage (Friday, 3 August
1492):
Your highnesses, as Catholics, Christians and Princes who love the
Christian faith and long to see it increase, and as enemies of the sect of
Mahomet and of all idolatries and heresies, have seen fit to send me,
Christopher Colombus, to the said parts of the Indies to see ... what way
there may be to convert them to our holy faith ... (from the original in Las
Casas 1989-94: XIV, 41).
Columbus began his diary, In nomine Domini nostri Jesu Christi. In
this perspective, the religious motivation of the evangelization of the
Indians became the justification for the whole enterprise of the con-
quest.
5
Introducing Columbus, Bartolome de Las Casas, writing
c. 1527, said that his motivation was to settle Spanish colonizers who
would constitute a new, strong Christian Church and a happy republic,
widespread and illustrious (from the original in Las Casas 1989-94:
III, 359). Columbus saw in his discoveries the fulfilment of Scripture,
especially, 'For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth'
(lsa. 65 .17), which he cites repeatedly; 'their voice goes out through
all the earth, and their words to the end of the world' (Ps. 19.4),
which he invokes five times in his Libro de las profedas; and, 'Then I
saw a new heaven and a new earth' (Rev. 21.1). Moreover, in general,
Columbus's figurative language, his sense of history and his cos-
mology are distinctly scriptural, intertestamental and prophetic, as
reflected dramatically in his account of a hypnagogic swoon in
Jamaica, 7 July 1503 (see Kadir 1992: 156-59).
Indeed, as his Libro de las profedas shows, Columbus interpreted
his mission within the broad picture of a climactic end and a millen-
nia! beginning, incorporating the recovery of Mount Zion (for the
accomplishment of which he hoped to finance 10,000 horsemen and
100,000 foot soldiers [see Kadir 1992: 202-203]), the geographical
5. This is a significant deviation from the biblical paradigm of the Israelite con-
quest, which never attempted to convert the Canaanites.
incorporation of all parts of the earth, and the conversion of all
humanity to the light of the true faith, thereby constituting the
Universal Church of one flock and one shepherd. At that point, the
World Emperor (Ferdinand of Aragon) would defeat the Antichrist
on Mount Zion, and an Angelic Pope of a renovated church would
lead the faithful flock into a blissful millennium before the Last
Judgment. And who better to initiate this process than Christopher,
the 'bearer of Christ' (Christoferens) (see Kadir 1992: 30-32)?
And so, the evangelization practised by the Church underpinned the
rapacious power of the state and gave it a control over the indigenous
culture. God was identified with the European invaders and Satan with
the barbarous infidels. Evangelization provided the ideological basis
for subjugation, just as gunpowder and horse provided the military
one, both in the service of the real goal of the conquest, the economic
subjugation of the region. The major justification for holy war of the
Decreta de Graciano derived from the Old Testament (Joshua, the
Judges, Saul, David, et al.), reflecting the divine mandate to wage a
holy war to conquer and consolidate their hold on the promised land.
Doubts about belligerent aggression were assuaged by Augustine's
claim that, without a doubt, a war ordained by God is just, since there
can be no evil in God.
Juan Mair's Libro II de las Sentencias, published in Paris in 1510,
was the first to tackle theologically the problem of the conquest of the
land of the infidels. Although he treated the subject in general terms,
he referred to the Spanish conquest of the American Indians by way
of example. The first justification for confiscating land already inhab-
ited and subjugating the indigenous population was missionary:
Christians may take to arms with the aim of preaching the Gospel.
Moreover, since, in line with the theory of Aristotle, barbarians are
slaves to naturalism, subjecting them to the rule of Christian princi-
ples was justifiable. Indeed, such was the general acceptance of those
ideas that from 1513 Spaniards were required to read the Requeri-
miento to the native Indians before battle, often without the benefit of
translation (see Todorov 1984: 148), urging them to
... recognize the Church as mistress and superior of the universe and the
Holy Pontiff called Pope, in his own right, and the king and queen our
lords, in his stead, as lords and masters and kings of these islands and
mainland, by virtue of the said donation ... Should you do so, you will do
well ... Should you not...I assure you that with God's help I shall attack
you forcefully and make war against you everywhere and every way I
2. Colonialism and Latin America
can .. .I shall capture you and your women and children and I shall enslave
you ... and I protest that the deaths and calamaties that should ensue from
this will be due to your own fault, and not His Highness's, or mine, or
these gentlemen's who came with me (Kadir 1992: 86-87).
55
The theology of Genessi Sepulvedae (Juan Gines de Sepulveda) is
representative of the argument justifying war against the Indians as a
prerequisite for their future evangelization. Sepulveda was born in
Spain c. 1490 and finished his treatise in 1545, but was forbidden to
publish it. His theology is significant for many reasons, but principally
because of the manner in which he managed to subordinate the
imperatives of the Christian Gospel to the political and ideological
actuality of the conquest. He discusses the conditions for a just war,
first, in general terms and then with respect to the American context.
There were three general conditions for waging a just war. The prin-
ciple of self-defence justified the need to repel force with force. The
protection of one's own rights permitted the recovery of things which
had been unjustly taken. Thirdly, it was permissible to punish the
evildoers. And he added a fourth: the right to force the submission, if
necessary by force of arms, of those who, by their natural condition,
should obey others but refuse their authority. The greatest philoso-
phers, he claimed, justify such a war.
In applying the general conditions for a just war to the American
context, the fourth condition became the foremost. Because it is natu-
ral that prudent, honest and humane men should rule over those who
are not, it follows that Spaniards have the perfect right to rule over
the barbarians of the New World, who, in prudence, intellect, virtue
and humanity, are as much inferior to the Spaniards as children are to
adults and women are to men, applying the Aristotelian distinction
between those born masters and those born slaves (Politics 1254b-a
work which Sepulveda had translated into Latin). Indeed, in his view,
the barbarian races were wild and cruel, as compared with the Spanish
who were a race of the greatest clemency. For Sepulveda, the indige-
nous people were barbarians, and even hombrecillos (midgets). It was
all the more reason, then, that they should accept the dominion of
their superiors, which dominion would bring them great benefits. The
civilized Spaniards would bring the most salutary benefits to the bar-
barians, who hardly deserved the name of human being, converting
them from being slothful and libidinous to being honest and hon-
ourable. He added that they would be rescued from being irreligious
and enslaved to demons to become Christians and worshippers of the
true God. Oviedo, Emperor Charles's official chronicler went further:
'Who can deny that the use of gunpowder against pagans is the burn-
ing of incense to Our Lord' (in Todorov 1984: 151).
Sepulveda's arguments justifying colonial domination follow from
attitudes that are racist, patriarchal and sexist. Moreover, they derive
from what he calls the natural order, rather than from the more ele-
vated values of an enlightened moral theology. Far from it being the
case that the Church would employ the Gospel as an agent to liberate
the indigenous people, some of its theologians were justifying the
domination and massacre of others in the name of bringing them to
the higher values of the Gospel. Evangelization, then, was becoming
an ideological underpinning of colonial conquest.
While one recoils from his attitudes and arguments, one realizes
that it would not have been difficult for Sepulveda to find in the more
ethnocentric traditions of the Bible further justification for his atti-
tudes. He cited the many familiar passages from Deuteronomy and
Leviticus, detailing the ideal of the violent expulsion of the Canaanites
from their land, and their replacement by Israelites, at the behest of
God. He held that the preaching of the Gospel would not be possible
before the people were subjected politically to the Christians, and that,
in any case, the pagan barbarism of the Indians was such as to make
them fit to be no more than slaves. What was coming in the name of
Christianity, then, was in fact much more an expression of western
colonial Christendom, fresh from its victory over the Moors: Christ-
ianity received the highest form of secular recognition, and in its tum
supplied religious legitimation to the secular power.
However, in practice, the role of religion was no crude, unadulter-
ated exploitation of the natives. It proceeded along widely accepted
lines of teaching the Christian faith, supported by education and works
of mercy, as attested by Fray Pedro de Gant, a Franciscan lay brother,
who wrote to the Emperor in 1532 (see Lockhart and Otte 1976: 213-
14). Writing to his family in Spain in 1574, Fray Juan de Mora, an
Augustinian friar and professor of Holy Scripture, betrays a combina-
tion of shrewd business acumen and professional piety in advising that
any one of his nephews wishing to come from Spain should invest in
some Bibles, recently printed in Salamanca. He assures them that such
an investment would be doubly repaid in the New World (see
Lockhart and Otte 1976: 213-14).
It was the arrival of members of religious orders which hastened
the work of evangelization. Cortes repeatedly besought Charles I to
send friars, and twelve Franciscans arrived in May 1524, being the
first contingent of the order that was most prominent in the 'spiritual
conquest'. They were soon joined by the Dominicans, who were
already active in the Caribbean colonies, and Augustinians. The God
of the Christian evangelizers was a jealous god who tolerated no
rivals, and hence the destruction of the native religions was systematic
and continuous. By 1559 in Mexico there were some 800 friars, who
approached the task of evangelization by seeking the conversion of the
native chieftains and nobles, in the hope that they would bring their
people with them to the Christian faith. The friars used the native lan-
guages as media of evangelization, especially the Aztec language,
Nahuatl in New Spain, Kekchi in Central America and Quechua and
Aymara in Peru. They were happy to keep the natives separated from
the Europeans, whom they feared would corrupt them. The friars
founded villages to bring the Indians together, and thereby oversaw
the political and economic as well as the religious activities of the
Indians. Many Indians accepted Christianity enthusiastically. Soon the
Church became a powerful and wealthy institution which permeated
the new colonial order and became a bastion of European culture and
civilization throughout the colonial era.
Dissenting Voices
There were, of course, dissenting voices within the Church (see
Dussel 1979). In particular, Fray Anton de Montesinos of Hispaniola,
in his celebrated Advent sermon (1511) on the text Vox clamantis in
deserto, said:
This voice declares that you are all in mortal sin, and live and die in it,
because of the cruelty and tyranny you practise among the innocent
people. Say with what right and justice you keep these Indians in such
cruel and horrible slavery. By what authority have you waged such de-
testable wars on these peoples, who were living on their own lands, inof-
fensively and peacefully, and exterminated such vast numbers of them
with deaths and slaughter the like of which was never known? How can
you keep them so oppressed and weary, without giving them food or
relieving them in their sicknesses, from which, because of the excessive
labours you force on them, they fall sick and die or, better, you kill them,
so that you can seize and acquire gold every day (from Bartolome de Las
Casas' account in Historia de las lndias, bk III, ch. 4).
Montesinos goes on to criticize the audience for not attending to the
spiritual welfare of the Indians (the responsibility of the encomendero
in the encomienda system), and asks, 'Are these not men? Do they not
have rational souls?' Las Casas recalls how the townspeople made
every effort to have Fray Anton retract, and returned to the church
on the following Sunday, expecting to hear it. However, this time
choosing Elihu's words in Job 36.2-4, Montesinos repeated the charge
that the Indian slaves were dealt with unjustly and tyrannically. He
assured the audience that God does not keep the wicked alive, but
gives the afflicted their right. That he declares the transgressions of
kings, when they behave arrogantly (Job 36.10-12).
Bartolome de Las Casas (1474-1566) has provided the most thor-
ough theological reflection on the cruel exploitation of the
Amerindians (edited 1989-94). The changes that took place in his
evaluation of things reflect the power of experience to influence one's
values. His predictable European's attitude to the conquest underwent
a fundamental change. Las Casas's father and brothers were part of
Columbus's second voyage, and he himself came to Hispaniola in
1502. He was ordained a priest in Hispaniola in 1512, the first
ordained priest in the New World. In 1513 he accompanied Panfilo de
Narvaez as a chaplain in the Spanish conquest of Cuba. By spring
1514 he became convinced of the injustice of the Spanish conquest,
and although he himself had held Indian slaves, underwent a conver-
sion, strongly influenced by his reading from the book of Sirach
34.21-27 (see Historia de las Indias, bk III, chs. 79-80).
He gave up his encomienda and resolved to defend the Indians. In
December 1515 he protested at the Spanish court against the mistreat-
ment of the Indians (see Historia de las Indias, bk III, chs. 84-85). In
1516 Las Casas was appointed 'Protector of the Indians'. In December
1522 he entered the Dominican Order in Hispaniola, and in 1527 he
founded a Dominican monastery in Puerto de Plata and began his
Historia de las Indias. In 1544 he was consecrated Bishop of Chiapa in
Mexico, but in 1547 he returned to Spain, where he took up perma-
nent residency. From July to September of 1550 he debated before a
royal commission the justification of the Spanish conquest with
Sepulveda, who had finished his treatise in 1545, justifying the Latin
American colonial war. Las Casas died in a Dominican monastery in
Madrid on 18 July 1566.
According to Las Casas, the main motive of the conquerors was,
Their insatiable greed and ambition, the greatest ever seen in the world.
And also, those lands are so rich and felicitous, the native peoples so
meek and patient. .. that our Spaniards have no more consideration for
them than beasts ... But I should not say 'than beasts', for, thanks be to
God, they have treated beasts with some respect; I should say instead like
excrement on the public squares (1974: 41-42, in Dussell990: 41).
59
While Las Casas initially supported the importation of black slaves
in the hope that their arrival would affect the release of the Indians,
he later repented of his decision (Beozzo 1990: 87). He insisted that
the Indians were better off as living pagans than as dead Christians,
and that they rather ought to be won over by the saving power of the
Gospel than by the force of arms (Berryman 1987: 10).
Although Francisco de Vitoria, theologian, jurist and one of the
pinnacles of Spanish humanism in the sixteenth century, demolished
the conventional justifications for the Spanish destruction of the
Indians, and is widely lauded as the first internationalist who chal-
lenged the theocratic imperialism of the mediaeval period, some of his
arguments defending 'just wars' ideologically underpin the subjuga-
tion of the Indians. If the Indians offered resistance to the rights of the
Spanish to do commerce etc., one could wage justifiable war (Vitoria
1538-39: 702). Fundamentally, the Indians were not far from being
mad, and were incapable of governing themselves. Hence intervention
by superior guardians was permissible (see Todorov 1984: 149-50).
In general, for Christian theologians in the mediaeval period, the
Indians' unbelief, abominations and crimes against nature justified the
occupation of their lands. Justification for violence was based on the
conquest of Canaan by the Israelites. The majority of the mediaeval
theologians, in espousing theocratic imperialism and supporting the
notion of holy war, bypassed the higher tendencies reflected in much
of the Hebrew prophetic tradition, and the altogether non-violence
tendencies within the New Testament. They settled for a regression to
those traditions within the Old Testament which glorify war as an
instrument of divine justice, thereby doing a serious injustice to the
spirit of the Gospel in ignoring its detachment from the concept of
territoriality so prominent in the Torah.
The prophetic opposition to Spanish colonialism grew out of com-
munities of lay people, priests, religious and bishops, who used the
language of the prophets to describe their plight. They were 'in
Babylon' rather than in the realm of the King of Spain. They were
preaching 'in Nineveh', or announcing God's judgment on their
people. On the feast of Pentecost in Cuba in 1514, Las Casas realized
that an offering made to God without the practice of justice was
stained with the blood of the poor (Sir. 34.18-22). The Christian
Quecha prophet, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala (1534-1616) noted
that 'where the poor are, there is Jesus Christ himself'. Of course
these prophets of justice endured the fate of all prophets. Las Casas
earned the opprobrium of both Church and state. The Audience of
Santo Domingo ordered him to retire to a monastery, and in 1548
Charles V ordered the withdrawal of his confessional. Sepulveda
branded him 'rash, scandalous and a heretic', and after his death,
Philip II approved the measures to confiscate his works (in Salinas
1990: 102-103).
The clash between the polarities of evangelization is manifest in the
stringent criticism of Las Casas by Fray Toribio de Motolinia who
dispatched to the Emperor on 2 January 1555 a detailed riposte to Las
Casas's denunciation of the conquest: 'His confusion appears great, his
humility small. He thinks that all err and he alone is right.' Fray
Toribio marvelled at the long-suffering patience of the Emperor and
his council for having borne 'for so long with a man so vexatious,
unquiet, importunate, argumentative and litigious, in a friar's habit, so
restless, so poorly bred, insulting, prejudicial and trouble making',
and so on. Fray Toribio assured the Emperor that Las Casas was
motivated by an impassioned animosity towards the Spaniards and a
love of the Indians which was little more than theoretical. 'He never
sought to know the good, only the bad, and he never settled down here
in New Spain.' In a word, 'Your majesty ought to order him to be
shut up in a monastery so that he could not cause greater evils' (in
Lockhart and Otte 1976: 224-29). Fray Toribio made an impassioned
plea for the Emperor's support on behalf of the extension to the
infidels of the fifth kingdom, that of Jesus Christ, of which the
Emperor was leader and captain. As for Las Casas, 15 or 20 years
confessing 10 or 12 sick, ailing Indians daily would remedy him (in
Lockhart and Otte 1976: 232).
To make matters worse, in the course of writing his long report to
the Emperor, Fray Toribio received and studied another of Las
Casas's tracts, which added to his self-righteous anger. Contrary to the
claims of Las Casas, the great diminishment in the numbers of the
indigenous Indian population was not the bad treatment of the
Spaniards, but diseases and plagues, or, using the biblical paradigm,
the idolatries of the natives:
Whether or not the great sins and idolatries that took place in this land
cause it, I do not know; nevertheless I see that those seven idolatrous gen-
erations that possessed the promised land were destroyed by Joshua and
then the children of Israel populated it (in Lockhart and Otte 1976: 239).
According to Fray Toribio, in their pre-Christian phase, the Indians
'went about everywhere making war and assaulting people in order to
sacrifice them, offering their hearts and human blood to the demons,
in which many innocents suffered' (in Lockhart and Otte: 241 ). The
improvement brought to the region by Christianity was plain to see.
The followers of Las Casas, called the lascasianos, faced similar
problems. Bishop Juan del Valle of Popayan (1548-60) protested that
he would continue to speak out against the abuses of the conquista-
dores 'even if they stone me'. He tried to bring the plight of the
Indians to the Council of Trent, but he died on the way. Several
bishops were martyred. Antonio de Validivieso, bishop of Nicaragua
(1544-50) was stabbed to death. These prophetic voices witnessed to
the greatest genocide in human history, and the end of the indigenous
world order. No less than the survival of the indigenous population
was at stake. Fray Pedro de Cordoba, vice-provincial of the Domini-
cans on Hispaniola, wrote to Charles Von 28 May 1517:
I do not read or find any nation, even among the infidel, has perpetrated
so many evils and cruelties on their enemies in the style and manner in
which Christians have done on these sad people who have been their
friends and helpers in their own land ... Not even Pharaoh and the
Egyptians inflicted such cruelty on the people of Israel (in Salinas 1990:
105-106).
Later (1597), in a similar vein, Fray Luis Lopez de Solis, bishop of
Quito wrote:
The cries of these natives, because of the many and great hardships they
experience at the hands of the Spaniards, reach the ears of God (in Salinas
1990: 101-102).
The plight of the Indians evoked like sentiments from the Francis-
can, Fray Diego de Humanzoro, bishop of Santiago de Chile in 1666,
who wrote to the Holy See:
The cries of the Indians are so great and insistent that they reach the
heavens. And unless we go to the aid of these wretches or our ardent tears
dry up their tears, I shall be called before the court of the same most just
Judge ... And those who oppress and insult the poor to increase their
wealth will be condemned by the Lord (in Salinas 1990: 102).
Pleading before Queen Mariana of Austria in 1699, Fray Diego de
Humanzoro bewailed:
In four hundred years of captivity ... the Hebrews increased in numbers
and did not die. But our Indians in their own land, ever since the
Spaniards entered in, have been wasted away in hundreds of millions by
the harassment and tyranny they suffer, and by the severity of the per-
sonal service which is greater and more terrible than that exacted by the
Pharaohs of Egypt (in Salinas 1990: 107).
The voices dissenting from theological support for European colo-
nization compared the situation of the Indians with that of the suffer-
ing Israelites in exile, whether in Egypt or Babylon, or of the early
Church in its persecution by the Roman Empire. Nothing in the Bible
compared with the destruction of Indian culture and life; the dis-
senters, of course, were reading the Bible with Israelite, rather than
Canaanite eyes. Moreover, they used those portions of the Scriptures
which supported their own stance, for example, Jon. 1.2 and Sir.
34.23-26. The dissenters saw themselves like John the Baptist crying
in the wilderness, prepared to pay the ultimate sacrifice for their
prophetic protest (Mk 6.17 -20). If 'they' persecuted Jesus, 'they'
would persecute his followers (Jn 15.20). In their association with
the sufferings of the victims, they saw themselves also as victims
(Mk 13.12-13).
In the eyes of these prophetic dissidents, those who purported to be
bringing the civilization of the Gospel to the Indians were in reality
demons. As Francisco Nunez de Pineda y Bascufian (1608-80) put it,
the Europeans in words sought to appear ministers of Christ, but by
their evil deeds they showed themselves to be ambassadors and ser-
vants of Satan (in Salinas 1990: 108). They merited the censure of
Jesus as recorded in Mt. 23.15-38: 'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and
you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as
yourselves ... '
Modern Theological Reflection and the Bible
The 1970s witnessed an unprecedented rise in ethnic militancy among
Indians. They reclaimed the right to speak for themselves, and to
present their own cultural heritage. This was not an uniquely Latin
American phenomenon, but one shared by almost all indigenous
peoples who were questioning their position of being dominated by
others. Over the past several decades the Churches of Latin America
have developed from being unquestioned allies of the established
order to becoming its most vigorous critics, thereby bringing them
into conflict with many of the regimes of the region, especially those
governed by the military. In fact, the Churches have done more than
any other institution to highlight the disparities of wealth within the
societies of Latin America (see Levine 1979). Priests, religious and
laity have taken a strong moral stance in support of the Indian
peoples, and the Latin American Church has been at the forefront of a
world-wide movement to recover the liberating vocation of theology
(see Hennelly 1995). To some extent this can be attributed to the guilt
which invariably arises when a moral person analyzes the social con-
ditions of the oppressed. Las Casas serves as an outstanding example
of such criticism, and is a hero of Latin American liberation theology,
as witnessed by the encomium of his great admirer and imitator, the
Peruvian Indian priest Gustavo Gutierrez (1993). Anthropologists,
too, have added their voices to the chorus of support for the voiceless
oppressed (see Arizpe 1988: 153).
In coming to terms with the imperialist past of European
Christendom the survivors of the indigenous culture must rise above
the neurosis of unrelieved lament, while the descendants of the
European invaders must avoid a 'neurotically arrogant cult of self-
accusation'. However, the reality of the cries of the poor, those long
dead, and those who cling on to life must be heard loud and clear, and
must enter the logos of theological discourse (Metz 1990: 118).
Ignacio Ellacurfa, one of the Jesuits murdered in El Salvador, wrote
of the crucified people of Latin America (1989), whom Jon Sobrino
insists must be brought down from the cross (1990: 125). In Latin
American liberation theology perspectives, 12 October 1492 marks
the beginning of a long and bloody Good Friday in Latin America and
the Caribbean, which continues to this day, with little sign of Easter
Day (Boff and Elizondo 1990: vii). The original sin of colonial
exploitation is summed up as follows: 'In 1492 death came to this
continent: the deaths of human beings, the death of the environment,
death of the spirit, of indigenous religion and culture' (Richard 1990a:
59).
Nothing in the history of humanity compares with the demographic
disaster (or genocide, if one wishes to apportion blame) of the indige-
nous population south of the Rio Grande (Latin America and the
Caribbean). While there is no consensus about the estimated popula-
tions of the region, it is generally agreed that the Iberian settlement
caused a massive fall in the native population. Some modern studies
estimate that in 1492 there were as many as 100 million indigenous
people, which in less than a century (in 1570) had plummeted to no
more than 10-12 million.
6
Meanwhile, the small numbers of settlers
from the Iberian peninsula grew steadily and rapidly.
The most extensive demographic research has focused on Central
Mexico. Woodrow W. Borah estimates a fall in population from 25.2
million in 1518 to 0.75 million in 1622 (1983: 26). The fall in popu-
lation varied throughout the continent, but, by any reckoning it was of
disastrous proportions. The arrival of plague and smallpox devastated
about one-third of the population of Central America. Peru's popula-
tion fell from some 9.0 million in 1520 to only 1.3 million in 1570,
and drops of between 80 and 50 per cent were registered in Colombia,
Venezuela and Ecuador (Burkholder and Johnson 1994: 100).
Cruel wars contributed to the destruction of whole indigenous com-
munities, and other factors included disease, ill-treatment and forced
labour, and the wholesale destruction of families. Indigenous women
were particularly badly treated, mostly as instruments of animal satis-
faction, a practice which continues today (Esquive11990). The reasons
for the plummeting of the population are many and interrelated:
The devastation and disruption that accompanied military conflict, the
mistreatment of the Indians through overwork and abuse, their starvation
and malnutrition as a result of altered subsistence systems and natural
disasters that destroyed entire crops, and the psychological trauma that
weakened the Indians' will to live and reproduce all helped to reduce the
population. Among other things, these conditions facilitated the horrific
effects of epidemic diseases introduced by the Europeans and Africans.
More than any other single reason, these new diseases to which the native
populations had no immunity led to astronomical mortality rates
(Burkholder and Johnson 1994: 101).
6. Overall estimates range from 8 million to 100 million. See the discussion in
Burkholder and Johnson 1994: 98-124; they opt for an overall population for the
Americas of between 35 and 45 million (p. 99).
Smallpox and measles were the main killers. There was a general
recovery by the eighteenth century due to the increased immunity of
the natives to the diseases that accompanied the Iberian conquest and
settlement.
Moreover, some 10 million black slaves were brought from Africa
to Latin America and the Caribbeans, beginning with 3 million to
Spanish America in the colonial period and 4 million to Brazil up to
1850, and some 3 million to the English and French Caribbean. Some
estimate the number of black slaves to have been 20 million (Richard
1990a: 59-60).
The demographic changes in Latin America are summarized as
follows:
Throughout the Hispanic world the Indian population declined by 90 per
cent or more from its precontact numbers, before beginning, in the fortu-
nate cases, a modest recovery at the end of the sixteenth century.
Nowhere was the indigenous population as large in 1808 as it had been
before the Europeans reached the New World. The white population grew
because of high levels of reproduction and, at least until the mid-
seventeenth century, immigration. In the Caribbean islands and adjacent
lowlands and in the lowlands of the Pacific slope, African slaves largely
replaced semisedentary native populations devastated by disease. Finally,
the racially mixed population was expanding rapidly by the late sixteenth
century and continued to increase its proportion of the total population of
Latin America as the colonial era progressed (Burkholder and Johnson
1994: 107-108).
The following Mayan testimony, from the prophecy of the book of
the Linajes, is a typical lament of the destruction as seen from the
perspective of the victims:
It was only because of the mad time, the mad priests, that sadness came
among us, that Christianity came among us; for the great Christians came
here with the true God; but that was the beginning of our distress,
the beginning of the tribute, the beginning of the alms, which made the
hidden discord disappear,
the beginning of the fighting with firearms,
the beginning of the outrages,
the beginning of being stripped of everything,
the beginning of slavery for debts,
the beginning of the debts bound to the shoulders,
the beginning of the constant quarrelling,
the beginning of the suffering.
It was the beginning of the work of the Spaniards and the priests,
the beginning of the manipulation of chiefs, schoolmasters and officials ...
The poor people did not protest against what they felt a slavery,
the Antichrist on earth, tiger of the peoples,
wildcat of the peoples, sucking the Indian people dry.
But the day will come when the tears of their eyes
reach God and God's justice
comes down and strikes the world (in Richard 1990a: 60).
This genocide could not have been done without an appropriate theol-
ogy. For every genocide, there was a theological violence (Mires
1986). As in other cases of colonial exploitation, the natives of Latin
America are never considered to be within the community of com-
munication. But from the point of view of the indigenous Outsiders,
the discovery and conquest were invasions which excluded them in so
many different ways, beginning their suffering, which has continued
to this day
The Situation Today
Faced with the prospect of a celebration of the quincentenary (1492-
1992) of the 'discovery', leaders of 15 different indigenous nations
met at an ecumenical consultation in Quito, Ecuador, and declared that
There was no such discovery or genuine evangelization as has been
claimed, but an invasion with the following consequences:
(a) Genocide through the war of occupation, infection with European
diseases, death from excessive exploitation and the separation of
parents from children, causing the extermination of over seventy-
five million of our brothers and sisters.
(b) Violent usurpation of our territories.
(c) The fragmentation of our socio-political and cultural organizations.
(d) Ideological and religious subjection, to the detriment of the internal
logic of our religious beliefs (in Beozzo 1990: 79).
Beozzo catalogues the political humiliation, the humiliation of
women and of native languages and religion, and the ongoing humil-
iation of such peoples as the Yanomami today, of whom he writes:
A people turned into strangers in their own land, stripped of their terri-
tory, of their history, of their memory, devastated by disease and death,
the survivors treated like animals (Beozzo 1990: 82).
Today in Latin America and the Caribbean there are about 70 mil-
lion indigenous people. In Guatemala and Bolivia they make up the
majority of the population, while in Equador, Peru and Mexico they
are the base of the rural population and of the migrants on the edges
of the big cities. In Brazil, Chile, Argentina, El Salvador and Costa
Rica they have been reduced to hard-pressed minorities (Beozzo 1990:
78). The indigenous people are persecuted in various ways in virtually
all the countries. They are confined to indigenous reserves, discrimi-
nated against in education, health and housing, and exploited in all
ways possible. The marginalization extends to practices within the
Church also. Richard makes an impassioned plea for the Church to
accept its part in the genocide of the indigenous people and to strive to
help them live with respect (1990a: 64-65).
The economic situation is Latin America is gruesome. It is esti-
mated that by the end of the century some 170 million Latin
Americans will be living in dire poverty, and another 170 million in
poverty critical to life (Sabrina 1990: 120). The majority of Latin
Americans live on the edge of economic catastrophe. However, to
attribute the poor economic and social conditions of today to the
original European invasion would be facile. The prevailing conditions
reflect the enormous rise in population from some 61 million in 1900
to some 390 million in the 1980s, which swamped gains in productiv-
ity and spawned the social evils of unemployment and the estimated 40
million abandoned children. However, the unique degree of inequal-
ity, exploitation and injustice that characterizes Latin America today
(which has been called a 'pigmentocracy') can be traced back to its
colonial past.
Nor can one ignore the influence of the authoritarian militarism of
many of the countries, which up to recently could depend on the sup-
port of the clergy. But no less trite is the utopian expectation of the
1960s that all that was needed was the right mix of mystical Marxism,
dependency analysis and an apocalyptic world view which reflects
millennia! aspirations. Liberation theologies rest on an assumption that
history can be transcended through the creation of a new human type,
which is the product of a new consciousness raised to a higher power.
This higher consciousness is considered to be able to overcome the
imperfections of the material life, which, for their part, are the prod-
uct of the false consciousness of earlier generations (see Pike 1993:
463).
Sabrina insists that confronting contemporary reality helps one to
assess the original and originating sin of the fifteenth century invasion.
What happened in history is best described by the metaphor of crucified
peoples. Such language avoids a cover-up. Crucifixion implies not
only death but having been put to death. The Latin American cross has
been inflicted on the people by various empires. These peoples repre-
sent the Crucified Lord of History, and constitute the historical con-
tinuation of the Lord's servant, whom the sin of the world continues
to deprive of any human decency, and from whom the powerful of
this world continue to rob everything, especially life itself (Ellacuria,
in Sobrino 1990: 122). Sobrino invites a meditation on Isaiah's
Servant Songs, keeping one's eyes on the crucified people. It remains
to be seen whether the mythology of the Suffering Servant will be
more influential in contributing to a new order than the sacralization
of a new business culture.
The Role of the Bible
We have seen that the Amerindians were subjected to the worst
excesses of colonialist imperialism at the hands of European settlers,
whose authority derived from that combination of secular power and
religious legitimation which characterized mediaeval Christendom. In
a theocratic society religious arguments have a compelling power. For
some Christian theologians at least (e.g. Sepulvedae), the Indians'
unbelief, abominations and crimes against nature justified the occupa-
tion of their lands, and the Israelites' conquest of Canaan legitimated
the use of arms against them (cf. Deut. 9.5; 18.9-14; Lev. 18.24-25).
We have seen that, in addition to the support which the Bible and
Christian theologians gave to the European invasion, there were
notable voices of dissent. What is at stake in considering the theologi-
cal reflection on the exploitation of Latin America is whether God is
on the side of the poor, exploited Indians, whom the Peruvian Indian,
Guaman Poma called 'the poor of Jesus Christ' (Beozzo 1990: 85), or
whether he aligns himself with the powerful and ravenous exploiters.
For his part, Poma had no doubt that all the Spaniards would go to
hell for their ill-treatment of the Indians (in Beozzo 1990: 87).
In our own day, when Pope John-Paul II visited Peru, he received
an open letter from various indigenous movements:
John-Paul II, we, Andean and American Indians, have decided to take
advantage of your visit to return to you your Bible, since in five centuries
it has not given us love, peace or justice.
Please take back your Bible and give it back to our oppressors, because
they need its moral teachings more than we do. Ever since the arrival of
Christopher Columbus a culture, a language, religion and values which
belong to Europe have been imposed on Latin America by force.
The Bible came to us as part of the imposed colonial transformation. It
was the ideological weapon of this colonialist assault. The Spanish sword
which attacked and murdered the bodies of Indians by day and night
became the cross which attacked the Indian soul (Richard 1990a: 64-65).
69
Richard judges that 'The problem is not the Bible itself, but the way
it has been interpreted' (1990a: 66). The task of the indigenous
peoples, in such a view, is to construct a new hermeneutic which
decolonizes the interpretation of the Bible and takes possession of it
from an indigenous perspective. Such a hermeneutic, reflecting the
consciousness-raising in Portuguese, conscientizaci6n
in Spanish) of the Brazilian educator, Paolo Freire, must acknowledge
the primacy of experience. History, the cosmos, the lives and the cul-
tures of the indigenous peoples are God's first book, and the Bible is
God's second book, given to believers in order to help in 'reading' the
first. Secondly, the indigenous peoples must be the authors of biblical
interpretation. Such a programme is already in place within the
Christian base communities through the method of people's reading of
the Bible, as described in the monograph Lectura Popular de la Btblia
en America Latina: Una Hermeneutica de la Liberaci6n, in the review,
Revista de Interpretacion Btblica Latinoamericana (San Jose: Costa
Rica, 1988, no. 1).
Similarly, Leif Vaage (1991) discusses developments at the interface
between biblical reflection and social struggle in Latin America, also
against a background of the use of the Bible as an instrument of
oppression in that region. The Centre for the Study of the Bible in
Brazil operates on the basis of three crucial commitments: to begin
with reality as perceived; to read the Bible in community; and to
engage in socio-political transformation through Bible reading. In this
so-called Contextual Bible Study process, biblical scholars become
servants who are invited to participate as the people choose. The
scholars must be committed to biblical studies from the perspective of
the poor and oppressed.
Paradoxically, defenders of the rights of the Amerindians used
some of the prophetic traditions of the Bible and the teaching of Jesus
as agents of liberation, even though the warring traditions of the same
Old Testament were a major instrument of oppression in the hands of
the conquistadores. In contemporary theological reflection, every
effort is made to appeal to the liberating themes of the Bible. The
emphasis in a liberation hermeneutics is to reread the Bible from the
basis of the poor and their liberation, with an emphasis on application
rather than on merely dragging out 'the meaning-in-itself'. In a
praxis-perspective, the important thing is to interpret life according to
the scriptures, rather than merely to interpret the text of the scrip-
tures (Boff and Boff 1987: 33-34). However, the Bible is an ambi-
valent document for promoting liberation. We shall see that in
respecting the combination of the exodus from Egypt and the eisodus
into the land of the Canaanites etc., the biblical paradigm justifies the
behaviour of the conquistadores, rather than serves as a liberating
charter for the oppressed (see Chapter 7).
Meanwhile we change location and move on in time to examine how
the Bible and Christian theology underpinned the evolution of
Afrikaner nationalism in southern Africa. We shall see a development
in the use of the biblical paradigm. Whereas the Bible was used as a
justification for, and, paradoxically, as a condemnation of Spanish and
Portuguese colonialism as that enterprise was in process of develop-
ment, in the case of Afrikaner colonialism and nationalism, we shall
see how the Exodus-settlement paradigm was appealed to only post
factum as a justifying device for colonialism, but as an ever-present
support for separate development. And no less paradoxically than in
the case of Latin America, the rejection of oppression as an acceptable
ideology was greatly assisted by appeal to the Bible.
Chapter 3
COLONIALISM AND SOUTH AFRICA
We shall see that the Bible and Christian theology played a significant
part also in the development of Afrikaner colonialism and national-
ism, and that theological and biblical justification for it was retro-
jected into the past, and presented as having provided the motivation
for earlier developments. The majority of South African Dutch
Reformed theologians in the period 1930-60, during which the policy
of apartheid was invented, formulated and defended, underpinned it
by recourse to the Bible, especially the book of Deuteronomy (Deist
1994). Of course, biblical interpretation was not the only, or the most
important factor in underpinning apartheid, since societal transforma-
tion reflects a matrix of social, political and religious factors. In
sketching the major developments in Afrikaner history, we shall see
how certain elements of this historical framework were transposed
later into constitutive components of a fabricated myth of origins,
some of which were underpinned by theological and biblical factors,
and were adapted to fit the evolution of Afrikaner political ideology.
Finally, I shall discuss the validity of retaining a myth of origins in
the face of the findings of historical and scientific research and theo-
logical reassessment, and in virtue of moral considerations.
Sketching Boer History
Since theological and biblical issues always find their place within a
complex matrix of many political and social components, it is instruc-
tive to review the broader picture from the beginning. We shall see
later that theological and biblical factors assumed importance only in
the modern period when Afrikaner nationalism was being fabricated.
It would not be difficult to make a case for the centrality of the bibli-
cal and theological aspects in the overall discourse. However, while
theological commentators give the impression that the religious
element was at the core at every stage, the vast bibliography on apart-
heid does not bear out such a claim (for example, see the modest
number of references to theological factors in Kalley 1987). A history
of ideas approach, emphasizing the biblical and theological compo-
nents without respect for the wider social discourse, would be facile.
What follows is a summary of relevant events, rather than an artificial
construct composed on the basis of a later 'myth of origins' .
1
In 1652 officials of the Dutch East India Company established a
small settlement on the Cape of Good Hope to provide refreshment
for the company's ships on their way to the Far East, and were joined
in 1688 by some 200 Huguenots fleeing religious persecution in
France. Initially relations with the indigenous peoples, Khoikhoi (called
Hottentots by the settlers) and San (called Bushmen), were amicable,
but as the settlers became more dominant relations became strained.
After some fighting in 1659-60 and 1673-77, the whites subdued the
pastoral Khoikhoi quite easily, but bands of San defended their ter-
ritory well into the nineteenth century. A British force took the Cape
in 1795, and although it was returned to the Dutch in 1803, the British
repossessed it in 1806.
By 1800 most of the Khoikhoi in the interior were landless and
almost entirely dependent on white farmers. In the course of the nine-
teenth century a 'white space' had been created, which black Africans
could enter only with the white man's permission. Although the Dutch
settlers shared a common language, religion, interests and colour con-
sciousness, there was no sense of a national consciousness. They were
more a community of settlers in a relatively hostile colonial environ-
ment than a nation in the making (Lester 1996: ch. 1). By the end of
the nineteenth century, white ownership of the land was secured by
occupation, while the indigenops people had been dispossessed and
displaced.
Lord Somerset, governor of the Cape from 1814 to 1826, instituted
an Anglicization policy. The European settlers shared many of the
ethnocentric attitudes of most European colonizers of the New World.
Slavery was finally abolished in 1834, and later historians claimed that
the British failure to compensate the slave-owners rather than the
1 . I am indebted to my colleague, Dr Alan Lester, for making available the
manuscript of his major study (1996), which I use extensively here.
3. Colonialism and South Africa 73
abolition itself, was a major source of Boer discontent.
In 1836 some 15,000 Boers left the colony and moved north and
east to embark on their own enterprise away from British control.
2
Later historians attribute this so-called 'Great Trek' of 1836 to mal-
treatment under the British: 'It was not so much love for the native
that underlay the apparent negrophilistic policy [of the British] as
hatred and contempt of the Boer' (Reitz 1900: 92, in Moodie 1975: 3).
After much struggle, the Boers settled peacefully in Natal and estab-
lished a republic there. But when the British annexed Natal, some
Boers left and settled in the already established Republic of the
Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic.
The Making of Afrikaner Nationalism
By the 1870s the subcontinent was divided into a large number of dis-
tinct political entities, and when in 1877 the British annexed the
Transvaal Republic also, the Boers turned to force, which led to the
first of two Anglo-Boer Wars (1881-82). The people came together at
Paardekraal on 16 December 1880 to renew the covenant with the
Lord (du Plessis n.d.: 96, in Moodie 1975: 7-8). Britain's growing
interest in the area was due in large measure to the discovery of sub-
stantial amounts of diamond and gold in 1886-87, which yielded enor-
mous profits to mainly English-speaking whites. Racial segregation
and discrimination were the hallmarks of the industry (L. Thompson
1995: 121).
From about 1870 to the end of the century, the combination of
British regiments, colonial militia and Afrikaner commandos com-
pleted the conquest of the black Africans. The whites, British and
Boers alike, had a sense of superiority vis-a-vis the African, in virtue
of belonging to a civilized race and a noble religion. This justified the
2. Terminology has played a part in the assessment of this emigration move-
ment. Before the 1870s the Boers who left the Cape Colony in the 1830s and 1840s
were usually referred to as emigrante (emigrants), and sometimes as verhuisers
(migrants), or uitgewekeners (refugees), or weggetrokkeners (leavers), though some
used voortrekkers (pioneers) to describe those who arrived in a given locality.
During the late 1860s a few individuals applied the term voortrekkers to all the Boers
who trekked from the Cape Colony between 1836 and 1854, and by the end of the
century virtually all Afrikaners used the term in that sense. By that time also, the
movement was treated as a great central saga in South African history, and
Afrikaners and some English-speaking South Africans were calling it the Great Trek
(L. Thompson 1985: 173).
expropriation of native land, the control of native labour and the sub-
ordination of the indigenes. Serious rivalries between the two white
groups were put aside in the task of conquering the Africans.
However, the British-inspired drive to control southern Africa and
create a confederation subject to the crown was resisted by the Boer
republics, culminating in the second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902).
By June 1900, both the Orange Free State and the Transvaal had been
declared British territory. Thousands of Boer deaths, including those
of 26,370 women and children in British concentration camps,
coupled with the hopelessness of their chances, forced the Boers to
surrender. The Treaty of V ereeniging in 1902 marked the surrender
of the Boer republics and their incorporation into the British Empire.
However, despite the defeat, the growing sense of unity against a pow-
erful enemy fuelled Afrikaner nationalism.
Mining had transformed patterns of black employment, so that by
1899 some 100,000 Africans were working in the gold mines, with
blacks living in segregated compounds. Increasingly, white urban-
dwellers objected to the influx of blacks, who threatened the demise of
'white civilization', and patterns of segregation developed. By 1910
and the Act of Union, whereby the Cape Colony, Natal, the Transvaal
and the Orange Free State joined to form the Union of South Africa-
a white-controlled, self-governing British dominion-racial segre-
gation was already part of the official discourse, and had the support
of both the British administrators and Afrikaner leaders. Under the
1913 Land Act, black Africans were forbidden to be on the land of a
European, except as a hired servant.
In 1914 General Hertzog established the first Afrikaner National
Party, which institutionalized the two-stream model for the future
united South Africa. The Afrikaner Broederbond was formed in 1918
to fight for the Afrikanerization of South Africa, and was at the van-
guard in transforming Afrikaner society-the thesis of Bloomberg's
study (1990). Its members were Protestants who were pledged to the
ideal of the eternal existence of a separate Afrikaner nation, which
had been called into being by God and was to stand firm upon the
Christian historical tradition and the Holy Law of God (Moodie 1975:
103-104).
In 1934, Dr Daniel F. Malan established the breakaway ('purified')
National Party, which embraced the ideal that the destiny of South
Africa was to be a republic, independent of the British crown. It
formally embraced Christian Nationalism, against the trend in
Europe: 'The Enlightenment dethroned God; but Afrikanerdom
crowned Him as the sovereign of their Republic' (Bloomberg 1990:
xxviii). From then on there existed a national party which stood
unequivocally for Christian National ideals, separate mother-tongue
education, strict segregation between white and black and a republic.
Malan, an ex-pastor, was to become the first nationalist Prime
Minister (1948-54).
The groundwork for a policy of apartheid was already laid in the
period 1910-48. By the beginning of the twentieth century, under the
influence of a crude Darwinian scientific racism, the superiority of the
white race was presumed. Moreover, segregation was viewed as being
the best protection against the possible mobilization of the African
workers. Separating them into 'reserves' was a mode of social control:
the Natives (Urban Areas) Act was passed in 1923, and several other
acts followed, enabling the cities to function with black workers, but
without their presence in numbers sufficient to disturb white
domination.
The growth in Afrikaner nationalism in the 1930s is attributed
variously to the material plight of white urban workers experiencing
discrimination under British-dominated capitalism (a Marxist per-
spective), or to the growth of Afrikaner identity and culture, which
reflected the differences in language, religion and historical experi-
ence between the Afrikaner and the Englishman (a liberal perspec-
tive). Specifically biblical and theological factors, as we shall see, also
played their part. In practice, of course, significant cultural change
was effected by a combination of ideological and material factors,
and, as Lester insists, by a spatial factor also. This included the dis-
orientation brought about by commercialization, industrialization and
the concomitant drift to the cities (Lester 1996: ch. 3).
The full-blown apartheid legislation introduced after the accession
of the National Party to government in 1948 was a pragmatic and
tortuous process to underpin the ideology of the Afrikaner nationalist
movement. Its rationale involved a number of factors: the drive to
maintain a segregated society in keeping with the Afrikaner politico-
religious precepts; obsession with racial purity and eugenics; and the
securing of white political supremacy and economic privilege against
the threat of African urbanization and social advancement. Another
goal of the National Party was for the Afrikaners to gain equality
with, or even dominance over the English-speaking population (Lester
1996: 107).
Ideological justification for apartheid was provided partially
through the anthropological work of W.W.M. Eiselen, who pro-
pounded the view that race separation offered the only solution, pro-
vided that it was undertaken in an honest and constructive spirit
(1948). However, recognizing that the racist elements of a crude
social Darwinism would not be acceptable in the 1950s, Eiselen and
his students had recourse to the primacy of distinctive culture, rather
than superiority of race, as the basis for separate development.
Apartheid was designed to preserve the cherished cultural identity of
each group: all distinct ethnic units must be allowed to survive, each
with its own language, religion and traditions.
The major Dutch Reformed Church was well-situated to play its
part in elevating apartheid into a moral crusade, and the Church's
annual congress of 1950 adopted a policy of eventual total separation
of white and black. However, as a blatantly racist ideology, apartheid
was appearing increasingly anachronistic. While it received widespread
Afrikaner support, it ran in the face of the international movement
against racial oppression and the African opposition, spearheaded by
the African National Congress (ANC, founded in 1912). Tensions
within the ANC led to a split and the formation of the more radical
Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC).
The Bantu Education Act of 1953 forced the closure of most of the
church schools. The Department of Native Affairs devised syllabi
which would support apartheid, but such was the disjuncture between
the White Man's History and the Truth as experienced by others, that
by the 1950s coloured teachers were dictating two sets of notes, one
'For Examination Purposes Only' and the other headed 'The Truth'
(L. Thompson 1985: 67-68). The history syllabus focused on the
revelation of God's choice of separate nations of people, reflecting the
core values of Christian Nationalism.
The second phase of apartheid was pushed through under the influ-
ence of H.F. Verwoerd, Prime Minister from 1958 to 1966, who
made a strong alliance with the Broederbond. The 1960s saw the
launch of an ambitious and ruthless programme of social engineering
which stripped the majority of Africans of South African citizenship
and forcibly removed over ~ million blacks from allegedly 'white'
areas to putative ethnic 'homelands' (Posel 1991: 1). Ironically, just as
racial supremacy was being institutionalized in South Africa, decolo-
nization was the order of the day throughout much of the rest of the
continent. The development of the homelands could be presented as a
kind of internal decolonization and a recognition of autonomous
African nationhood (Lester 1996: 126). However, the homelands
would always be too poor and too dominated by the South African
government to be regarded as national states by any credible govern-
ment other than South Africa (see Lester 1996: 129). The real inten-
tion of the Afrikaners was to corral the blacks into areas outside the
conurbations and bus them in only as required.
Verwoerd's policy reached explosive proportions with the
Sharpeville slaughter of 69 Africans engaged in the anti-pass cam-
paign of 1960. The shootings and the banning of opposition precipi-
tated a crisis on the international front, which led to withdrawal from
the Commonwealth and the declaration of South Africa as a republic
in 1961. After the UN condemnation of apartheid in 1963, an arms
embargo was applied that contributed to the economy's relative
isolation.
Opposition to the social effects of segregation was being expressed
among leading Afrikaner churchmen, as exemplified by the Cottesloe
Consultation of December 1960. Nevertheless, the Broederbond took
upon itself the evangelization of the republic into an acceptance of the
ideal of separate development. All cabinet members, all university
principals, half the school principals and inspectors, and some 40 per
cent of Dutch Reformed Church ministers were members of the Bond,
and all members of the Bond supported the ideals of Christian
Nationalism.
However, by the late 1970s, the apartheid system was showing fatal
cracks. On his accession to the premiership in 1978, P.W. Botha
hoped that it would be possible to rescue the system by reforming it.
However, black opposition threatened widespread insurrection and
rendered the townships ungovernable. Theological support for apart-
heid took a dramatic turn with the publication of the Kairos Document
on 13 September 1985, a joint effort of 50 theologians in and around
Soweto. Like the Liberation Theology of Latin America, the starting-
point of its theological reflection was the experience of the poor
blacks.
After Botha's heart attack in 1989, F.W. De Klerk assumed the
presidential office on a reformist ticket, leading to the unbanning of
the ANC, the PAC and the South African Communist Party, and the
freeing of prisoners, including Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela in
February 1990. In June 1991, a series of Acts was repealed ending
statutory apartheid. Negotiations with the black parties followed, and
the historic elections of 1994 changed the face of South African poli-
tics. Nelson Mande1a was elected President and F.W. De K1erk became
one of two Vice-Presidents, with Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi becom-
ing regional Premier in KwaZulu/Natal and Minister for Home
Affairs.
However, the legacy of apartheid left South Africa with the greatest
recorded inequality of any country of the world, with two-thirds of its
black population surviving below a defined minimum level and
9 million people completely destitute: currently, 60 per cent of the
population lives below the breadline, 55 per cent are illiterate and
over 40 per cent are unemployed (Lester 1996: 240). The cost to the
African blacks of the realization of the Afrikaner dream holds in
relief the words of Dr D.F. Malan: 'The history of the Afrikaner
reveals a will and a determination which makes one feel that
Afrikanerdom is not the work of men but the creation of God'
(quoted in Moodie 1975: 1).
Fabricating the Myth of Early Afrikaner Nationalism
A distinctive Afrikaner identity and nationalism began to develop
towards the end of the nineteenth century and the early part of this
century. In general, national communities and nation states reclaim, or
fabricate their 'past' in order to justify their present condition and
aspirations. Typically, where the real past is either inadequately
known, or contains realities unhelpful to nationalist identity, 'facts'
about the past are fabricated to support the ideology and 'myths of
origins' are created. Afrikaners also appropriated the past as part of
the politics of the present, and in their reconstruction of history, the
group and nationalist identity which had begun to develop only
towards the end of the nineteenth century was ascribed to the earlier
decades also.
The emerging Afrikaner nationalist identity had to contend with the
double threat from British imperialism and domination of commercial
life, and from the unenviable Afrikaner status of being a minority
within a predominantly black African population. Its ideologues,
politicians, writers and clergy countered these two threats by creating
an effective mobilizing mythology. One element of this asserted that
when the Dutch arrived in the Cape in 1652 they found only some
recently arrived black nomads, giving the Dutch as much right to the
land as the blacks. Indeed, they had more, since the blacks had refused
the gift of western Christian civilization.
The Dutch Reformed Church minister, S.J. du Toit (1847-1911),
created the nucleus of an exclusive ethnic mythology. His distinctively
Afrikaner history, Die Geskiedenis van ons Land in die Taal van ons
Volk (The history of our country in the language of our people) was
the first book published in Afrikaans (1877). According to du Toit,
Afrikaners constituted a distinct people occupying a distinct father-
land, charged by God with the mandate to rule South Africa and civi-
lize its heathen inhabitants. He was the first Afrikaner intellectual to
adopt the concept of the Afrikaners as a chosen people. Although du
Toit's pan-Afrikaner nationalist ideology did win out ultimately in the
general election of 1948, it did not dominate Afrikaner political insti-
tutions in the nineteenth century, where it was opposed by Presidents
Brand and Kruger, who were intent on preserving the separate identi-
ties of their states (L. Thompson 1995: 135).
The message of a distinctive Afrikaner identity and desire for inde-
pendence was promulgated very widely through private Dutch
Reformed schools and preaching in the Afrikaner Calvinist tradition,
and through the multifarious activities of the Broederbond (Moodie
1975: 110-11). The early decades of the century saw an orchestrated
effort to create an Afrikaans literature which fabricated appropriate
myths of origin. The passionate nationalism of the intellectuals was
quickly translated into textbooks, so that the whole nation was engaged
in creating its mythological nationalist past (see L. Thompson 1985:
35-68). This depended on a number of ideological constructions of the
past, including the myths of Slagtersnek and the Great Trek and the
Vow, myths which were easily adaptable to changing circumstances,
and the myth of racial superiority.
The Political Myth of Slagtersnek
The hanging of Afrikaner rebels at Vanaardtspos, 12 miles from
Slagtersnek on the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony in 1815, is a
foundational myth of Afrikaner nationalism (see L. Thompson 1985:
105-43). Although not treated as a prominent event in the formation
of Afrikaner society before the 1870s, from that time on it provided
in microcosm verification of the two great threats to Afrikaner sur-
vival, English and black, and the fabricated account became a
significant element in the emerging mythology of Afrikaner
nationalism.
'Freek' Bezuidenhout was found guilty of holding back the pay of a
Khoikhoi labourer and refusing to allow him to leave his employment
on the expiry of his contract. He was sentenced in absentia to impris-
onment, and when he refused to surrender on 10 October 1815, the
officer in command ordered his arrest. Seeing him standing with a
gun at his shoulder, the coloured sergeant shot him dead.
Bezuidenhout's brother, Hans, swore vengeance and began to organize
a conspiracy whose aim was to oust the British regime and the hated
Cape Regiment.
On 18 November, about 60 of Hans's supporters were at Slagtersnek
when a loyalist force of Boers and British dragoons caught up with
them. Hans and his family and others fled northward into Xhosa
country. On 29 October, nearly 50 miles north-east of Slagtersnek,
Bezuidenhout and his wife and son resisted the combined forces of
Boers and members of the Cape Regiment, and as a result of his
wounds Hans died. Soon afterwards, 47 conspirators were tried at
Uitenhage, and on 22 January 1816 the judges gave their verdict that 6
were to be hanged. The hangings were carried out at Vanaardtspos, 12
miles south of Slagtersnek, on 9 March 1816. The event marked the
coming of law and order to a previously anarchic frontier zone and
was a turning point in the history of the Cape Colony: white colonists
had been tried, convicted of high treason, and executed.
From Vanaardtspos to Slagtersnek
There was no widespread reaction to the events at the time, and they
faded into oblivion in the works published before the 1870s. However,
the testimony of Henry Cloete in the 1850s, 'We can never forget
Slachters Nek' was to play a major part in fabricating the myth. His is
the first record of the confusion between the place of the hanging,
Vanaardtspos, which was 12 miles away from the emotive name
Slagtersnek (Butchers' Neck), a place where butchers' agents from
Cape Town bought cattle from the Boers. The application of the term
slagter to 'the place of the hangings' conjured up visions of a
slaughter.
When in the 1870s and 1880s British imperialist interests were
threatening the autonomy of the Boer republics, attitudes to the
British were retrojected into the earlier period also. The Slagtersnek
myth became firmly established in the mythology of Afrikaner
nationalism by 1877, when S.J. du Toit produced his history. For him,
the issue in 1815-16 was not law and order but 'tyranny'. The
'Uprising of Bezuidenhout' was against the British government, the
great 'oppressor'. The Boers who collaborated were 'traitors' and the
rebels 'heroes'. The uprising and its suppression, he claimed, were a
major cause of the Great Trek, and the two together constituted the
foundation of the Afrikaner national spirit (see his lament, in Moodie
1974: 4). Other Afrikaner histories embellished the hagiographic
portrayal of the rebels (for example, J.D. Kestell, and also under the
pseudonym Leinad). Around this time, too, the Afrikaners were being
identified with the Israelites: 'Just as the old Israel was planted in
Canaan and was protected, so our people, through God's providence,
are planted in Africa from Holland, France and Germany, according
to Psalm 80.9-16 and Isaiah 27.1-3' (C.P. Bezuidenhout in 1883: ii, in
L. Thompson 1985: 268 n. 55).
Although by the end of the century the myth was firmly established
in the struggle against British imperialism, the need for white solidar-
ity ensured that the treatment of it did not exacerbate inner-white
tension (L. Thompson 1985: 132-37). On 9 March 1916, a thousand
people gathered at Vanaardtspos for the unveiling of a monument to
the rebels. Good wishes were sent by the founder of the Afrikaner
National Party, General J.B.M. Hertzog, and the main speaker was
Dr D.F. Malan, who would lead the National Party to victory in 1948.
Since historians have exposed the factual inaccuracies of the myth it
has undergone a certain transformation in the Afrikaner identity. But,
in any case, it was not of the same order as the myth of the Great
Trek.
The Political Myth of the Great Trek
The 'Great Trek' of Boers from the Cape Colony to the Orange Free
State and Transvaal (1835-40) became foundational for the South
African nationalist myth of origins. The myth claims that the Bible
served as the source of Boer identity, and that as they trekked, the
Boers considered themselves to be the chosen people, rescued from
Egypt (British oppression), on their way to the promised land. The
indigenous black people were the 'Canaanites' who served foreign
gods, whom 'Israel' should not marry (see A. Du Toit 1984: 55).
President M.W. Pretorius is reported to have addressed a large gath-
ering in 1871 after the following fashion:
His Excellency then addressed himself to the original Voortrekkers, call-
ing them Fathers of Israel, and depicting and likening them to the chosen
of the Lord, who even as the Israelites had trekked from Egypt to escape
Pharaoh's yoke, had themselves withdrawn from the yoke of the detest-
able English Government to found their own government and administra-
tion (see A Du Toit 1984: 64-65).
However, as Du Toit (1984) shows, a critical study of the source
material presents a different picture. There is little to suggest that the
emigrants considered themselves in that light, and much to reinforce
the interpretation that their self-perception had an altogether different
provenance. Some of the emigrants used biblical imagery, for
example, describing Natal as a 'land overflowing with milk and
honey', and their trek as a 'wandering in the desert', but that is hardly
sufficient to prove that they considered themselves to enjoy the divine
mandate corresponding to the Israelite conquest of Canaan. Indeed, a
year before the trek, the Cape Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church
criticized the venture in terms of 'those who have left their hearths
and altars, without a Moses or Aaron, to trek into the wilderness to
seek out a land of Canaan for themselves without promises or guid-
ance' (quoted in A. Du Toit 1984: 69). Du Toit has shown that before
the 1850s the Boers made no claim to be a chosen people (1983):
We must conclude ... that despite the claims about the abundance of evi-
dence in support of the contention that the trekkers identified themselves
with Israel and the Chosen People of the Lord ... [there is not] a single
convincing and clear statement of these ideas from a primary source in the
period before the 1870s (A Du Toit 1984: 70, 73).
Nevertheless, by 1880 several Transvaal clergy were asserting that the
emigrants ('trekkers') did consider themselves to be a chosen people
(A. Du Toit 1983: 939-47).
In fact, the emigrants expressed their motivation for escaping in
terms of the changed conditions brought about by the British freeing
of slaves, which exacerbated a labour shortage, the more efficient
collection of rents, the land shortage and frequent raids from the
Xhosa rather than of the biblical Exodus-settlement narrative (see
Lester 1996: 64). Their leader, Piet Retief, summed up the reasons
for the Boer emigration of 1838, talking of 'the severe losses which
we have been forced to sustain by the emancipation of slaves', and so
on (see also the two reasons given by Retief's niece:
3
the continual
depredations by the 'Kafirs' and the failure of the government to hon-
our its promises, in L. Thompson 1985: 149).
Afrikaner nationalist historians from the 1870s onwards, however,
reinterpreted the trek in biblical terms, as Afrikaners faced the pres-
sures of British imperialism, which culminated in the Anglo-Boer
War of 1899-1902, and the conditions of the 1930s. The fabricated
nationalist history read as follows. After 20 years of British oppres-
sion, the Boers set out from the Cape Colony and sought 'shelter in
the unknown wilderness of the North'. It was a 'pilgrimage of mar-
tyrdom' of 'our people', who were pursued by the British army (after
the fashion of Pharaoh), and everywhere they were beset by the unbe-
lieving black 'Canaanites'. But because God's people acted according
to his will, he delivered them out of the hands of their enemies and
gave them freedom in the promised land (Moodie 1975: 5; Reitz 1900:
92-93). Savage barbarians descended on the vanguard and murdered
men, women and children. The survivors, trusting in God, drove
them off (du Plessis n.d.: 94, in Moodie 1975: 6). The emigrants then
turned east and sent Piet Retief and others to purchase land from the
Zulu chief, Dingane. Later, the Zulus treacherously murdered Retief
and the deputation and routed the other emigrants: 'The earth
swarmed with thousands of enemies. No human help was possible and
even tiny children cried to the Lord and the voice of the people came
up to God' (du Plessis n.d.: 104, in Moodie 1975: 6; see also the
heroic version of Preller 1909: 152-53, in Moodie 1975: 6). Those
who survived sent for reinforcements from their brothers in the
Colony and Free State:
Andreis Pretorius arrived with his brave band to unite with them and
punish the enemy and subjugate him. There followed the memorable battle
of Blood River on December 16, 1838, where the solemn oath was sworn
to celebrate that day each year to the glory of the Lord if He would grant
3. Anna Steenkamp wrote of the emancipation of the slaves: 'It is not so much
their freedom that drove us to such lengths, as their being placed on a equal footing
with Christians, contrary to the laws of God and the natural distinction of race and
religion, so that it was intolerable for any decent Christian to bow down beneath such
a yoke; wherefore we rather withdrew in order thus to preserve our doctrines in
purity' (in L. Thompson 1995: 88).
them victory. And God gave them victory over thousands of enemies (du
Plessis n.d.: 94, in Moodie 1975: 6-7).
The Boers then settled down peacefully in Natal and established a
republic: 'The territory had been purchased with our money and bap-
tized with our blood' (Reitz 1900: 13, in Moodie 1975: 7).
While the sense of suffering in the Anglo-Boer War was the genera-
tive stimulus to an emerging Afrikaner nationalism, by the 1920s it
was being traced back to the epic of the Great Trek, due to the
influence of J.D. du Toit (Totius), Langenhoven, D.F. Malherbe and
others. Indeed the foundation of the Voortrekker Monument was not
laid until December 1938, and it was not officially opened until 1949.
On 16 December (Geloftedag, the Day of the Covenant) each year
until recently, Afrikaners gathered in cities, towns and villages to
renew their covenant with God, and, after speeches from clergy, aca-
demics and politicians, sang psalms, notably Psalms 38, 46, 118, 130
and 146, and civil-religious hymns (especially 'Die Stem van Suid-
Afrika', later the national anthem). By 1938 most Afrikaners believed
that they belonged to an elect people, and that sooner rather than later
God would give them another republic (Moodie 1975: 21).
The Centenary of the Great Trek
Henning Klapper, one of the founders of the Broederbond, prepared a
mass centenary re-enactment of the Great Trek and the Blood River
vow (for details see Moodie 1975: 175-87). On 8 August 1938, at the
foot of van Riebeeck' s statue in Cape Town, he addressed the large
crowd gathered to see off the first two wagons. His speech alluded to
'the covenant vow of Sarel Cilliers', allegedly made by the voor-
trekkers, and ended his speech by 'dedicating these wagons to our
People and our God' (Moodie 1975: 179).
The re-enactment created spontaneous paraliturgies and evoked a
vocabulary replete with biblical resonances. An old man recited the
Canticle of Simeon (the Nunc Dimittis of Lk. 2.29-32), the 'Golgotha
of Dingane' was commemorated and an altar built. 'The national grain
of wheat had first to die before it could bear fruit,' Klapper insisted at
Vegkop. Dr J.F.J. van Rensburg sketched the Via Dolorosa of the
voortrekkers and pointed to the guidepost of their faith: 'Even death
could not check them, and rightly so, because without graves there is
no resurrection.' At the graveside of Sarel Cilliers, Klapper said that
Cilliers erected the beacon of the first covenant between God and the
People, and that the covenant altar was sealed at Blood River. God had
kept his part of the covenant, but Afrikanerdom had failed to keep its
part. His message was,
Return to the God who will honour us ... The continued existence of our
People is a miracle. Our People is like the thornbush at Horeb-it burns
and burns but is never consumed. Our People were frequently in deep
grief and divided, but always became united again (Klapper, quoted in
Moodie 1975: 181).
This 'oxwagon unity' constituted a potent political force during the
next decade and advanced the goal of republicanism. The popular
media, for example, Preller' s hagiographic biography of Piet Retief
and his script for the 1916 film Die Voortrekkers, played a vital role
through disseminating a shared vision of Afrikaner identity and
nationalism (see Lester 1996: ch. 3). The growing number of hagio-
graphical biographies and histories percolated into the schools, largely
due to Theal's multivolume History, which was reprinted several
times after his death in 1919, wherein we read that the voortrekkers
'came to regard themselves as God's peculiar people', a view which
reached its highest point of development with those who grew up in
the wandering (in L. Thompson 1985: 182).
The Political Myth of the Vow
On 16 December every year up to recent times, when the ceremony
recalls the suffering of the conquest rather than the victory over the
Zulu King Dingane, South Africans commemorated the events of
16 December 1838 when 468 Afrikaners, with their Coloured and
African servants and about 60 African allies, repulsed repeated attacks
by some 10,000 Zulu warriors. The Zulus retreated with some 3000
dead, while not a single emigrant was killed. The Boers named it the
Battle of Blood River, from the staining of the adjacent stream with
Zulu blood. The name of the celebration has changed from Dingane's
Day to the Day of the Covenant (from 1952) to the Day of the Vow
(from 1980). The occasion has been used by prominent politicians to
further their brand of Afrikaner nationalism. Until recently, it was
taboo to question the origin and tradition of the celebration.
According to the reports of the leader, Andreis Pretorius, and his
amanuensis, Bantjes, the Victory Commando was inspired by pro-
found religious fervour. The crucial religious meeting occurred on
Sunday, 9 December. Bantjes writes that Pretorius told the men who
would conduct the services in the different tents to suggest that all
should pray to God for his help. He wanted to make a vow that
'should the Lord give us the victory, we would raise a house to the
memory of his Great Name, wherever it shall please Him'. He invited
them to invoke the assistance of God to enable them to fulfil the vow,
and to note the day of the victory in a book and make it known and
celebrated to the honour of God, 'even to our latest posterity'. Sarel
Cilliers, who was a church elder, conducted the service in Pretorius's
tent with the singing of Ps. 38.12-16, a prayer, a sermon on Judg. 6.1-
24, followed by prayer in which the vow was made. Psalm 38.12, 21
was sung, and the service ended with the singing of Ps. 134. After his
description of the battle Bantje wrote, 'Prayers and thanksgiving were
offered to God, and after divine service ... the chief commandant again
sent a strong party to pursue the Zulus' (in L. Thompson 1985: 152-
53).
Subsequently the principal encampment was named Pietermaritz-
burg, in honour of Piet Retief and Gert Maritz, and made the capital
of the Republic of Natal.
There are reasons to question the historicity of the vow. The early
Afrikaner historians did not mention it, and, while Pretorius erected a
modest barn-like church in 1841, there is no surviving record that it
was considered to be in fulfilment of the vow. It ceased to be used for
services in 1861, after which it was used for a variety of commercial
purposes until in 1908 it was converted into the Voortrekkers'
Museum. Moreover, the annual celebration of the battle was widely
ignored for a quarter of a century.
However, in 1864, P. Huet and F. Lion Cachet, two Dutch
Reformed clergy, persuaded the general assembly of the Dutch
Reformed Church in Natal that 16 December should be celebrated
religiously as a day of thanks, but when in 1867 Cachet organized a
celebration at the Blood River laager, there was no special focus on
the vow. Nevertheless, H.J. Hofstede published the first history of the
Orange Free State in 1876, which included a deathbed journal of Sarel
Cilliers (1871), which Hofstede and others put together. It focused on
the piety of Pretorius and on Cilliers's own role. Seeing the superior-
ity of the Zulu numbers, he and Pretorius decided that, as with the
Jews of the Old Testament, 'we, too, were bound to make a promise to
the Lord, that if He gave us the victory over our enemy, we would
consecrate that day, and keep it holy as a Sabbath in each year'.
Cilliers's version differs from that of Bantjes, in that he made the vow
before all the congregation in the open, rather than, as in Bantjes's
version, in Pretorius's tent. Secondly, there is no mention of building
a memorial church (see L. Thompson 1985: 167). Moreover, there
was no mention of a vow when in 1865 the Transvaal government
proclaimed 16 December to be a public holiday.
However, when Afrikaners rebelled in 1880, after Theophilus
Shepstone proclaimed the Transvaal to be a British colony in 1877,
they 'renewed' the covenant at Paardekraal by piling a cairn of stones,
symbolizing past deliverance from black domination and future striv-
ing for independence from the British. Thereafter, in 1881 and every
fifth year, the government organized patriotic festivals on Dingane's
Day. There was no mention of the original vow in the 1881 celebra-
tion, but Cilliers's version of events was printed in the programme in
the celebration of 1891. A monument was erected over the historic
heap of stones and President Kruger spoke about the Battle of Blood
River.
In December 1895, Transvaal clergy and officials organized a cere-
mony near Weenen in Natal. They collected the bones of Retief and
the other victims of the 1838 massacre and buried them in a casket in
the foundation of what was to be a memorial monument. Moreover,
towards the end of the century there was a mushrooming of pub-
lications dealing with the trek, and much of it emphasized the reli-
gious intensity of the participants. Theal observed that the commando
resembled an itinerant prayer meeting rather than a modern army
(L. Thompson 1985: 172-77). Some drew attention to the vow, but
others ignored it completely.
4
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, then, clergy, politicians
and intellectuals in the Transvaal and Orange Free State resurrected,
embellished, codified and celebrated a version of the events of 16
December 1838, with a view to promoting pride in Afrikaner identity
in the face of British aggression. However, with the waning of British
imperialism in this century, their successors modified the interpreta-
tion of the alleged events and presented them as supporting Afrikaner
identity in the face of the threat posed by black African nationalism.
This is a striking example of the classical political myth: partial
4. Leonard Thompson suggests that Cilliers' s vow was merely one of loyalty to
the leadership, for which there were precedents in Boer society (1985: 162-63).
concordance with the historical reality; delayed codification and rapid
development; fervent deployment for political purposes; and ability to
be changed to suit circumstances. Its major difference from the Myth
of Slagtersnek is its religious overtones and the degree to which it has
been at the centre of Afrikaner identity.
The Political Myth of Racial Superiority
The political mythology of Afrikaner nationalism rested upon the
assumption that humanity was divided according to race, however
inadequately defined, and that races were divinely ordained to pre-
serve their distinctiveness. Separation (apartheid), therefore, was a
necessary condition for living. In line with the attitudes of European
colonizers, from the beginning of the Boer settlement in 1652 we have
stereotypical descriptions of the blacks as an idolatrous, licentious,
thieving, lying, lazy, dirty, cannibalistic and beast-like people.
5
A
commission of the British colonial government of Natal in 1852
reveals the widespread Afrikaner estimation of the black man as one
who had to be flogged to get him to work, and who did not know even
his own true interests. These Afrikaners spoke in secular, pragmatic
terms rather than in theological, philosophical or historical ones
(L. Thompson 1985: 83-84).
The theory of the Great Chain of Being, according to which humans
could be placed in strict hierarchy, beginning with the most perfect
(European) and reaching to the orang-outang, could not be applied
simply to the black African, since their skulls were no different from
those of Europeans. But there was no doubt that human races were
distinct populations, each with specific and enduring cultural as well as
physical characteristics, and that each was at a given place on a scale
of civilization between 'civilized men' (that is, Europeans, preferably
Englishmen) and 'savages' (L. Thompson 1985: 90-93). Depending on
how much 'white blood' they had managed to accumulate in north
Africa, occasional individuals might be capable of rising to the high
standard of European culture. Moreover, it was considered that the
intelligence of a black child stopped developing at puberty.
Nearly all white South Africans in the first half of the twentieth
century subscribed to the view that they belonged to a race which was
5. In the Oxford English Dictionary (1983) the term 'Hottentot' is applied to 'a
person of inferior culture'.
superior to all other races in Africa, and that their superiority was
reflected in their religion, technology, politics and arts, and in their
power and wealth. 'Scientific' underpinning of these racist attitudes
relied upon views which derived from craniology, eugenics and
hereditarian theories of intelligence quotient, all of which have been
shown to be products of inadequate methodology, false logic and, in
one case at least, of concoction (Gould 1981). Nevertheless, this racial
superiority validated the conquest of the native population and the
theft of their land in a way analogous to the white colonialist imperial-
ism of the rest of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, and the whites'
exploitation of Afro-Americans. They also justified white political
supremacy and exploitation of 'coloured' labour.
The Biblical-Theological Core of Afrikaner Nationalism
Woven into the fabric of South African society are distinctive threads
which are so intertwined as virtually to lose their separate identity.
One such thread is the theological factors which have influenced
developments within the society. The evidence for the influence of
theological and biblical factors is abundant. Sir John Robinson, Prime
Minister of Natal, wrote of 'those Predikants whose influence over the
minds and hearts of their flocks has contributed so greatly to present
events' (in L. Thompson 1985: 172). Several political leaders, for
example, Paul Kruger, President of the South African Republic from
1881 to 1902, leaned heavily on Calvin's teaching on God's revelation
to, and covenant with the people (Institutes III, 24:8), which applied
not only in the Old Testament but in Kruger's own time.
According to Kruger, God chose his Volk in the Cape Colony and
brought them out into the wilderness, and, having chastened them,
made a covenant with them, and 'the enemies were defeated and the
trekkers inhabited the land which God had given them in this rightful
manner'. God had visited his Volk with British imperialism because
they had not fulfilled their covenantal obligations in celebrating the
renewal of the covenant for over 30 years. At Paardekraal in 1880, he
recognized that the people of the Transvaal Republic were 'a People
of God in the external calling', and 'God's People' (du Plessis n.d.:
103, 89, in Moodie 1975: 26-27). However, the choice of the Volk
demanded total loyalty and fidelity. The miraculous outcome of the
war of 1881 was more than final proof of God's election of the
Transvaal people. His theology reflected the cycle of transgression,
retribution and reconciliation mirrored in his favourite psalm,
Ps. 89.31-34.
For Kruger, black Africans were not among God's people, and
were destined to be kept in perpetual subjugation to their white
masters. The British onslaught on the republics was an attack of the
devil against the Church of the Lord. Although the British might have
thousands in the field and the Boers only hundreds, the Boers had
Jesus Christ, the supreme commander of heaven and earth. As early as
1900, Kruger related the sufferings of his people to Christ's passion,
and spoke of the necessity of undergoing Gethsemane and Golgotha
before the daybreak of their liberation (Moodie 1975: 32-36). Kruger
urged General Smuts to read the book of Joel, wherein surely the dev-
astation (Joel 1.6-10) and restoration (Joel 1.15-2.1; 3.1-21) motif
would comfort him.
The Christian Nationalism of Abraham Kuyper
Running parallel with other elements within emerging Afrikaner
nationalism was the ideal of establishing a Christian National state
based on the Christian nationalism of Calvin, which was at the heart of
the Broederbond ideology. This stressed that all authority came from
God, and all government was to be guided by Calvinist Christianity as
interpreted and updated by the inspirational Dutch Reformed theolo-
gian Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), who popularized the term
'Christian-National'. Kuyper believed that Calvinists formed the 'core
of the nation', whose mission was to bring the whole of life under the
canopy of God. In South Africa, his theological position was determi-
native within the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk, and the Gerefor-
meerde Kerk. Despite the defeat of the Boers, Kuyper was confident
that they would ultimately triumph, provided they never abandoned
the Reformed faith of their fathers. In his view, God created a divers-
ity of races, colours and cultures which should be acknowledged as
g1vens.
Bloomberg traces the core ideas of Afrikaner Nationalists back to
Kuyper's influence: the national principle must always be under the
guidance of the Christian principle; Calvinism is 'totalist' or 'univer-
sal', with all human affairs falling within its domain; and Calvinism is
a 'this-worldly' and 'open' creed which could align itself with
nationalism (Bloomberg 1990: 10). The destiny of the Afrikaners was
to be custodians of a Christian nation, with the Bible as the primary
source for all political life. However, Kuyperian theology had to
struggle with the more secular nationalism in the Broederbond, with
the return in the 1930s from Germany of such academics as
H.F. Verwoerd (later Prime Minister) and Dr Nicholaas Diederichs
(who was to become Minister of Finance and then President of the
Republic of South Africa), who brought with them a sense of the
people bound together by a common culture and history. Although
this tendency gave precedence to the nation in terms of language,
culture and national experience, it found common cause with the more
religious sentiment among the Afrikaners who were a Volk of God's
choosing. Man is called to belong to a national community: 'Only in
the nation as the most total, most inclusive human community can man
realize himself to the full' (Diederichs, in Moodie 1975: 156-58), and
so Protestant-Christian and Cultural-National were to be the principles
of the nation. Diederichs was opposed to any doctrine of human
equality. The very diversity of nations was determined by God, and,
more importantly, each nation was created by God to execute his will
(in Moodie 1975: 159). For Diederichs, then, service to the nation was
service to God, a view which took him close to deifying the nation.
Boer Nationalism and the Bible
The place of the Bible in the Afrikaner psyche is seminal (see
e.g. Loubser 1987), and biblical language infused political discourse.
C.J. Langenhoven spoke of the trekker martyrs as 'an Afrikaner
nation, worthy to bear the crown won upon the Way of the Cross by
the fathers who died'. This Via Dolo rosa of South Africa did not 'run
dead' on 'Dingane's Golgotha' but passed over and beyond it into
God's future, which held a republican resurrection (in Moodie 1975:
14). But the period 1920-50 saw the rapid urbanization of the
Afrikaans' section of South Africa. This urbanization was reflected in
several social changes, including the great increase in the number of
urban Dutch Reformed congregations. The readers of the Bible in this
period were Afrikaners who, from having been independent farmers
and land owners with a culture of their own, suddenly became urban
day labourers in a foreign culture, and at the bottom of the social
ladder (see details in Deist 1994: 14-15). The Afrikaans Churches were
not ready for these changes. Moreover, the influx of black people into
the cities, competing for unskilled, low-cost jobs exacerbated the
problem for the Afrikaans-speaking people, who began to insist that
the principle of geen gelykstelling (no equalization) between blacks
and whites be applied (see Deist 1986).
The Boer Exodus
Although there is no evidence that the emigrants in the Great Trek
considered themselves to be the chosen people on the way to the
promised land, the biblical paradigm was employed widely in the
service of the South African nationalist myth of origins, as the sponta-
neous naive identification with early Israel shows (see Deist 1994):
Israel
Went from Palestine to Egypt
Suffered under foreign rulers
Escaped from Egypt to Canaan
Considered the nations as numerous
and strong
Miraculously received a new land
Made a covenant with God
Erected memorial stones
Fathers recounted their history to
posterity.
Afrikaners
Went from Europe to Africa
Suffered under British rule
Escaped from the Cape Colony to the north
Considered black people as numerous
and strong
Miraculously received a new land
Made a covenant with God
Erected the Cilliers memorial church
Fathers recounted their history to
posterity.
The theologically informed Afrikaans intelligentsia in the 1930s, who
bemoaned the lack of religious feeling in, and the increasing secular-
ization of the urban 'poor white' Afrikaners, found a spiritual home
in Kuyper's Free University of Amsterdam, and developed their own
'Boer Calvinism', which was based on the plain sense of the Bible
(Deist 1994: 18-19). It invoked a naive-realist reading of Deuteronomy
and played a significant role in the establishment of the policy of
apartheid. Sermons and official publications of the Dutch Reformed
Church kept reminding their Bible readers of the kairos, the moment
when, like Moses, they were on the verge of a new creation, a white
South Africa for their children. But the Afrikaners saw their situation
as vulnerable, corresponding to that of the Israelites (see Stuhlman
1990: 626). Like Moses, the Church leadership saw that survival lay
in strictly keeping to God's commandments, in particular Deuter-
onomy's divinely instituted division of nations (see Deut. 4.37-38; 7.7-
8; 10.14-15). If God had divided the nations, no one had the right to
unite them. Deuteronomy promoted the unity of the Afrikaners, on
the one hand, and their separation from the black peoples, on the
other. J.D. du Toit (Totius) wrote concerning Deut. 22.9-11:
3. Colonialism and South Africa
Firstly, what God united, no one may divide. This is the basis of our plea
for unity among Afrikaners ... Secondly, we may not unite what God has
divided. The council of God is realized in pluriformity ... Consequently we
do not want any equalization or bastardization (in Deist 1994: 23).
P.J. Loots wrote,
From this reformed principle of separate, independent groups within the
kingdom (of God) flows our policy of apartheid in church and state. This
is a universal principle which was, according to Scripture and Nature,
instituted by the great Creator and which the Afrikaner people and the
Church of the Boers have to defend to the utmost, especially against
modem liberalism's policy of equalization (in Deist 1994: 23).
93
Clearly, scriptural pluriformity is preferable to humanly fabricated
equality. The separation of peoples is based on Scripture, equality of
the races is a human construct. Deuteronomy's prohibition of mixing
with the indigenous people (7.3-4-see Cohen 1983; Dion 1985;
0' Connell 1992) provided the scriptural basis for the South African
immorality act prohibiting mixed marriages, so that Afrikaners would
be kept pure. Just as the Israelites were a minority, who, through the
help of God, acquired possession of the land, so too the South African
Calvinists regarded their possession of the land as divinely ordained.
Like the authors of Deuteronomy, the South African Calvinists were
insensitive to the fact that the land had already been inhabited. The
occupation of the land was to be celebrated, rather than questioned
along ordinary historical lines.
At the Blood River centennial celebrations on 16 December 1938,
Dr Malan developed the theme of the Second Great Trek: as the
Afrikaners prevailed over the blacks at Blood River in 1838, now
they were on a second trek, to the cities, where the new battlefield was
the labour market:
Here at Blood River you stand on holy ground. Here was made the great
decision about the future of South Africa, about Christian civilization in
our land, and about the continued existence and responsible power of the
White race ... You stand here upon the boundary of two centuries. Behind
you, you rest your eyes upon the year 1838 ... Before you, upon the yet
untrodden Path of South Africa, lies the year 2038 ... Behind you lie the
traces of the Voortrekker wagons ... Your Blood River lies in the
city ... [The new trek] is not away from the centres of civilization ... but a
trek back-back from the country to the city ... Today Black and White
jostle together in the same labour market...Their [i.e. the voortrekkers']
freedom was ... above all, the freedom to preserve themselves as a White
race. As you could never otherwise have realized, you realize today their
task to make South Africa a White man's land is ten times more your task
(in Moodie 1975: 198-200).
Theological and biblical factors, then, played a significant part in
underpinning Afrikaner nationalist ideology, as it developed and
adapted itself to changing circumstances. Of course the dominant
theological-biblical support did not go unchallenged within the Dutch
Reformed Churches. Indeed, the policy of apartheid was criticized
strongly, and later branded a heresy by theologians and predikants
operating from within different theological and biblical perspectives.
Myth, History, Science and Morality
At the heart of the Afrikaner history of South Africa is the unques-
tioned assurance of the superiority of white civilization. General
Hertzog insisted that in South Africa, '"European" is synonymous
with civilization; and the extinction of the White man must inevitably
be the extinction of civilization' (in Moodie 1975: 261). Compared
with the mature white men, the black man is as an eight-year-old, a
child in religion and moral conviction, without art or science, and
with only the most elementary knowledge. However, South Africa was
pursuing its policy of racial apartheid when the majority of the rest of
the world was moving in the opposite direction, and by the 1980s it
was a unique phenomenon, 'a pigmentocratic industrialized state'
(L. Thompson 1985: 191).
In order to underpin the apartheid system in a world where racial
mixing was becoming the norm, it was necessary to reiterate its ideo-
logical base, fabricate its history, and reinterpret its mythology. The
inherent distinction between races was emphasized, inevitably with the
self-confident whites assumed to be millennia in advance of the blacks,
as a consequence of which separation was an imperative. With respect
to origins, the blacks had no more claims to the land than the whites,
since they had come down from the north at around the same time as
the whites had landed in the south, and, in any case, their lives were
semi-nomadic (see the government-sponsored information newsletter
in L. Thompson 1985: 199-200). In addition, recourse was had to the
'historical' components of the nationalist mythology (Slagtersnek, the
Great Trek, the Vow, etc.), and biblical and theological elements also
were woven into the fabric of the Afrikaner apologia.
Challenging the Core Myths
However, after the Second World War, historians, anthropologists and
theologians began to subject every facet of the nationalist fabrication
of South African history to investigation, and many began to reject it.
This led to the demolition of the Slagtersnek myth, the dilution of the
strength of the Covenant myth and the breakdown of the myth of the
vacant land.
Richard Elphick showed that all the people whom the Dutch had
encountered in the western Cape were members of the same basic
genetic population, which had lived in the region for millennia
(1977). The application of carbon-14 dating to the archaeological
finds, revealing 'early Iron Age' pottery (in Transvaal, c. 300 AD),
exploded the myth of the empty land. The ancestors of the Bantu-
speaking people of South Africa had lived in the region for at least
1400 years before the Dutch arrived. Human communities had hunted,
fished and collected edible plants for many thousands of years. By
1000 AD there were farmers in Natal, the Cape Province, the
Transvaal, Swaziland, eastern Botswana and the north-eastern Orange
Free State.
6
The political myth of Slagtersnek, which had developed as an
Anglophobic legend, began to wane when the English- and Afrikaans-
speaking peoples had common cause against the threat posed by the
majority black population. From the mid-1950s, it virtually disap-
peared from the South African school textbooks, and by the 1980s
historical investigation continued to undermine it. It was no great loss,
since its Anglophobic origins were counterproductive, and, since it
was a secular myth, the Afrikaner Churches never promoted it as
much as other elements of nationalist mythology.
The Battle of Blood River and the Covenant (1838) continued to be
the prime symbol of Afrikaner Christian identity. But in March 1979
the University of South Africa convened a conference whose main
speaker, Professor Floris van Jaarsveld, it was known beforehand,
would treat the Covenant in secular terms and question some of its
elements. As soon as he went to the podium a gang of men tarred and
feathered him. Eugene Terreblanche seized the microphone and
protested: 'On what grounds can Professor van Jaarsveld question
6. See L. Thompson 1995: ch. 1, and the summary of the evidence and sources
in Marks 1980.
Sarel Cilliers' vow that the Day of the Covenant would always remain
a day of reverence?' (Sunday Times, 8 April 1979, in L. Thompson
1985: 280). Van Jaarsveld's paper argued that there was no way of
knowing the exact wording of the Vow, that it was not observed
before 1864, and that Afrikaners were not the only people to claim
that God was on their side.
Theological Rethinking
Meanwhile, there was growing discontent concerning apartheid within
the Christian Churches, both at home and abroad. South Africa was
one of the most 'Christian' countries in the world, with some 83.9 per
cent of its inhabitants and 93.8 per cent of its whites being members
of a Christian Church, and some 35 of its 40 government ministers
belonging to one of the three Dutch Reformed Churches. Some 49 per
cent of the white population was affiliated to these Churches ( 40.1 per
cent to the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk [NGK], 6 per cent to the
Nederduitse Hervormde Kerk [NHK], and 2.9 per cent to the
Gereformeerde Kerk van Suid Afrika [GKSA]), with Anglicans
(10.76 per cent of whites), Methodists (9.6 per cent), Roman Catholics
(8.2 per cent), Presbyterians (3.1 per cent), etc. constituting the
remaining 45 per cent of white Christians-some 3 per cent of whites
were Jews. But Christianity was also the major religion of the
oppressed, with 69 per cent of the 18 million black Africans, and
some 91 per cent of coloureds belonging to a Christian Church (of
which 28.5 per cent belonged to the Nederduitse Gereformeerde
Sending Kerk [NGSK], the Dutch Reformed Mission Church for
Coloureds established in 1881 for coloured members of the NGK [see
Goguel and Buis n.d.: 6-8 for figures for 1970 and 1977]). The
General Synod of the NGK, meeting every four years, had supported
the policy of separate development. The more conservative Transvaal
NHK was strongly supportive also, and the growing dissent came
from within the GKSA, the smallest of the three (De Gruchy 1979,
1991; De Gruchy and Villa-Vicencio 1983;
7
Moodie 1975; Hope and
Young 1981).
7. This is a collection of essays by theologians of different denominations and
cultural backgrounds (Boesak, Tutu, et al.), compiled with the intention of enabling
South Africans to interrogate themselves in the light of the decision of the World
Alliance of Churches to declare apartheid a heresy.
As early as 1948 most of the other Christian Churches in South
Africa had issued separate statements condemning the proposed apart-
heid legislation. The Rosettenville Conference of 1949, the first
ecumenical gathering since the National Party had come to power,
with, however, only one fraternal delegate of the NGK, affirmed the
unity of all God's people and declared that, 'The real need of South
Africa is not "Apartheid" but "Eendrag" [unity through teamwork]'
(De Gruchy 1979: 54-56). The meeting convened by the Federal
Missionary Council of the NGK in Pretoria in November 1953, which
invited Church leaders from other denominations, acknowledged a
threefold division among the representatives that was reflected also in
the wider society: those who believed in the biblical righteousness of
racial separation; those who did not share that view but practised some
form for pragmatic reasons; and those who were convinced that sepa-
ration in the Church was wrong and stood condemned according to
Scripture (De Gruchy 1979: 57-58).
There was some criticism of apartheid within the NGK throughout
the 1950s, during which the legislation was implemented at full speed.
Two leading theologians, Professors Ben Marais and B.B. Keet
undermined the theological and biblical base of apartheid. In his
reflections of the impact of apartheid in Sophiatown, the Anglican
missionary, Father Trevor Huddleston, charged that the acts and
motives of apartheid were fundamentally evil and un-Christian.
Apartheid was inspired by 'The desire to dominate in order to pre-
serve a position of racial superiority, and in the process of domination
to destroy personal relationships, the foundation of love itself. That is
anti-Christ' (Huddleston 1956: 182).
The Sharpeville massacre of 21 March 1960 precipitated a major
crisis for apartheid, both at home and abroad, and revealed the cleav-
age between the NGK and the other Christian Churches, with a call by
the controversial Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Joost de Blank,
to expel the NGK from the WCC. Instead the WCC agreed to help
arrange a consultation on Christian race relations and social problems
in South Africa.
The Cottesloe Consultation ( 1960) consisted of ten delegates from
each of the South African member Churches of the WCC, including
eighteen black participants, and five representatives of the WCC. This
representative body issued a concluding statement rejecting all unjust
discrimination, proclaiming the common dignity of all people, the
equal rights of all racial groups in South Africa and the appropriate-
ness of common worship of all believers. While the 'English-speaking'
Churches-a loose term to describe the autonomous Anglican,
Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregational Churches-might have
wished the resolutions to go further, the NHK delegates rejected them.
The real question, however, was how the NGK synods would react.
After strong criticism from conservative groups within the Church,
the Cape and Transvaal Synods rejected the resolutions and the NGK
withdrew from the wee.
On the international front, the Christian Church had been coming to
terms with the challenge which racism posed for the Christian faith.
The WCC and member Churches issued a steady stream of ecumenical
resolutions, statements and actions on racism from as early as 1937
(see the WCC Programme to Combat Racism 1986 publication [WCC
1986]). The Fourth Assembly of the WCC (Uppsala, 1968) con-
demned racism, especially the white racism of persons of European
ancestry, which entitles all white peoples to a position of dominance
and privilege while professing the innate inferiority of all darker
peoples, especially those of African ancestry, which justifies their sub-
ordination and exploitation (in WCC 1986: 35). The Fifth Assembly
of the WCC (Nairobi 1975) condemned racism as
A sin against God and against fellow human beings. It is contrary to the
justice and the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. It destroys the human
dignity of both the racist and the victim. When practised by Christians it
denies the very faith we profess and undoes the credibility of the Church
in its witness to Jesus Christ. Therefore, we condemn racism in all its
forms both inside and outside the Church (WCC 1986: 53).
The Assembly went on to confess the Church's conscious and uncon-
scious complicity in racism, and its failure to eradicate it even from
its own house.
In 1976 the Central Committee of the WCC reiterated the WCC's
opposition to apartheid and racism as being 'contrary to the Gospel
and incompatible with the nature of the Church of Christ and violating
basic human rights', and condemned the deceptive manoeuvre of the
South African government to perpetuate and consolidate apartheid by
the creation of 'independent' Transkei. It called on member Churches
to expose the evil of the Bantustan policy (in WCC 1986: 59). In the
following year, the Central Committee denounced as blasphemous the
grave and blatant injustices being perpetrated in the name of
'Christian civilization' by governments and powerful oppressors in
southern Africa (in WCC 1986: 64). The 1980 International Consulta-
tion of 'The Churches' Response to Racism in the 1980s' designated
racism as a sin which must be openly fought against by all those on
Christ's side, and again, the Church regretted and repented for
coming to this realization so late (in wee 1986: 74).
The Sixth Assembly of the WCC (Vancouver, 1983) dealt inter alia
with the institutionalized racism in South Africa. It reiterated the
WCC' s opposition to apartheid and called on all Christians to oppose
it:
Apartheid raises barriers and denies the fullness of life in Christ.
Christians and the Churches are called to obedience to Jesus Christ the life
of the world, and to maintain the integrity of the Church, to oppose
apartheid in all its forms, to support those who struggle against this sinful
system of injustice, and to denounce any theological justification of
apartheid as a heretical perversion of the Gospel (par. 2 of the Preamble to
the Statement on Southern Africa, in WCC 1986: 85).
It acknowledged that against a background of state repression the
Church could not avoid confrontation with the government (par. 5 in
WCC 1986: 85). In its Recommendations, the WCC Assembly '(a)
reiterates its conviction that apartheid stands condemned by the Gospel
of Jesus Christ the life of the world, and that any theology which sup-
ports or condones it is heretical' (in wee 1986: 87), and calls for the
dismantlement of apartheid (Resolution [h], in WCC 1986: 88).
Meanwhile, at home, the NGK had issued two synodical documents,
Human Relations in South Africa (1966) and Human Relations and the
South African Scene in the Light of Scripture (1974). Without offer-
ing any justification for the claim, the latter document, like all NGK
statements, assumed the authority of the Bible as containing normative
principles for the guidance of all areas of life. The text, at one and the
same time, emphasized that humankind was essentially one and funda-
mentally equal and that ethnic diversity in its very origin was in con-
formity with the will of God: 'A political system based on the auto-
genous or separate development of various population groups can be
justified from the Bible' (par. 49.6). The NGK then rejected racial
injustice and discrimination in principle but affirmed the policy of
separate development. In such a hermeneutic, the Bible becomes a
kind of oracle book of proof texts, a selective use of which can sub-
stantiate a particular political policy-in this case about 50 texts, with
particular dependence on the following favourites selected in support
of apartheid: Gen. 1.28; 11.1-9; Deut. 32.8-9; Acts 2.5-11; 17.26
(Vorster 1983: 96-99). Bax shows how unconvincing these appeals are
(1983: 114-32), and how the report passes over or ignores other bib-
lical passages which promote the unity and integrity of God's people
(1983: 133-40).
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s individual NGK theologians and
predikants took bold stands against government policy. Opposition to
apartheid was coming also from other Reformed sources, especially in
Holland, leading to a break in relations in 1978 between the NGK and
the Gereformeerde Kerken in that country. Already in 1968 the South
African Council of Churches (SACC) had published a statement main-
taining that apartheid and separate development were contrary to the
Christian gospel. One detects around that time, also, the beginnings of
a South African black theology, influenced by James Cone's ideas. In
its South African context, black theology aimed at conscientizing
blacks with a sense of their own black identity and dignity. Looking to
the Bible, this theology fixed on the Exodus paradigm, or at least on
the first half of it, and the message of Jesus which presents a God on
the side of the oppressed. While one notes the caution in the survey of
Ukpong (1984), black theology became an important factor in the
change of perspectives through the writings of Allan Boesak (1976,
1984), Takatso Mofokeng (1983) and others, and particularly the
charismatic leadership of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
In the 1980s the SACC intensified its opposition to apartheid under
its general secretary, the then Bishop Tutu; 1982 was a crisis year for
the Church. While the NGK had withdrawn from the WCC in 1960, it
had kept its membership of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches
(WARC), but when that body, in its forthright statement Racism and
South Africa (Ottawa, 1982), declared apartheid to be a heresy and
accused the Afrikaner Churches of 'theological heresy', W ARC sus-
pended the membership of the NGK and the NHK and elected as its
president Allan Boesak, a member of the NGSK. Later in the year
Boesak' s Church joined the South African Council of Churches.
The NGSK drafted a status confessionis in 1982 which declared that
apartheid was idolatry and its theological justification a heresy, and
published it in 1986, challenging the apartheid theology of the NGK.
However, conservative forces retained control of the NGK at the
General Synod of October 1982. But all the while opposition to racial
discrimination was mounting from the 'English-speaking' Churches,
the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church, as well as from
significant segments within the NGK (see e.g. De Gruchy 1979; Hope
and Young 1981; Regehr 1979).
The publication of The Kairos Document on 25 September 1985,
and its revised second edition one year later, signalled the climax of
indigenous theological comment on a political situation that was
becoming increasingly uncontrollable. It provided a critique of the
prevailing theological models of the Churches ('Church Theology'),
and proposed an alternative biblical and theological one which the
authors hoped would make a real difference to the future of South
Africa. It criticized the 'State Theology' of the apartheid state for its
misuse of theological concepts and biblical texts for its own purposes
(Chapter 2). It charged that Church Theology's guarded and cautious
critique of apartheid was superficial and counterproductive, since it
employed the stock ideas of reconciliation, justice and non-violence
without engaging in an in-depth analysis of the signs of the times. It
insisted that there could be no peace without justice, and that some
conflicts were between a fully armed and violent oppressor and a
defenceless oppressed:
Nowhere in the Bible or in Christian tradition has it ever been suggested
that we ought to try to reconcile good and evil, God and the devil. We are
supposed to do away with evil, injustice, oppression and sin-not come
to terms with it. We are supposed to oppose, confront and reject the devil
and not try to sup with the devil (The Kairos Document 3.1 ).
To require blacks to engage in reconciliation without justice was to
demand that they be accomplices in their own oppression. The peace
the world offered was merely 'a unity that compromises the truth,
covers over injustice and oppression and is totally motivated by self-
ishness'. It pleaded:
To be truly biblical our Church leaders must adopt a ... biblical theology of
direct confrontation with the forces of evil rather than a theology of rec-
onciliation with sin and the devil (The Kairos Document 3.1).
It compared state oppression, injustice and domination with the vio-
lence of the rapist, and acts of common resistance and self-defence
with the physical force used by a woman to resist the rapist, accepting
the defensive use of force as the lesser of two guilts. It criticized the
premise of the Church leadership that the apartheid regime was a
legitimate authority, and charged that its neutrality gave tacit support
to the oppressor (3.3). 'Church Theology' should have an adequate
understanding of politics and political strategy, and should extend its
concept of salvation to the here and now (3.4).
The starting point of a Prophetic Theology must be the experience
of oppression and tyranny. While Prophetic Theology of its nature is
always confrontational, it must hold out hope. It must name the sin of
apartheid as 'an offence against God', but also announce the hopeful
good news of future liberation (4.1). The South African crisis was one
of tyranny, with the tyrannical regime being hostile to the common
good (hostis boni communis) in principle, and permanently, know-
ingly or unknowingly representing a sinful cause and unjust interests
(4.3). A tyrannical regime, albeit the de facto government, had no
moral legitimacy. Apartheid represented a regime of tyranny which
was the enemy not only of the people but of God, and as such had to
be removed (4.4). Nevertheless, the message of hope must be sus-
tained, and the oppressors must be made aware of the diabolical evils
of the system and be called to repentance (4.6).
While the majority of the Church was among the oppressed already,
those still on the side of the oppressor must cross over and participate
in the struggle for a just society. Moreover, the Church should not
collaborate with a tyrannical regime, nor do anything that confers
legitimacy on a morally illegitimate administration. It must be pre-
pared to disobey the state in order to obey God. The Church should
challenge, inspire and motivate people with the example of the cross,
rather than be a bastion of caution and moderation (5.5-6).
The Document had a powerful impact in the townships. Its method
of doing theology, with ordinary people reflecting on their oppres-
sion, had a profound effect not only at home but abroad (see e.g.
McAfee Brown, 1990). In conformity with the dictates of the
Reformed tradition, its appeal to the Scriptures was fundamental but
characteristically selective. For example, in appealing to an historical-
critical reading of Rom. 13.1-7 and the critique of Ezek. 13.10-14, it
avoids any engagement with those traditions in the pentateuchal narra-
tives which mandate the destruction of the indigenous population, and
in the book of Joshua which detail their implementation (Chapter 2).
Instead it finds refuge in a selective reading of the prophetic and
wisdom literature (especially psalms). In its reference to biblical vio-
lence it appeals only to that of Israel's enemies (Chapter 3). In dealing
with suffering and oppression in the Old Testament, it confines itself
to that inflicted on the Israelites by the Egyptians, the various Canaan-
ite kings and so forth (Chapter 4).
In dealing with the biblical themes of liberation and hope, the
authors choose those passages which present oppression as sinful and
wicked (for example, the state of servitude of the Israelites in the
Exodus legend [Exod. 3. 7], and in several verses from the Psalms
[Pss. 74.14; 9.4; 10.18; 103.6]) but omit any reference to the divinely
mandated conquest of the promised land and the treatment to be meted
out to the Canaanites and others. There is appeal to the preaching of
Jesus (Lk. 4.18-19) and to his invitation to the rich to repent. It
stresses that, despite the presence of evil, the message of Jesus is one
of transforming hopeless and evil situations to good, so that God's
Kingdom may come. Goodness, justice and love will triumph in the
end, when all tears will be wiped away (Rev. 7.14) and the lamb will
lie down with the lion (Isa. 11.16). True peace and hope are not only
desirable but are guaranteed (4.5). Nevertheless, for all its liberation
rhetoric, the biblical hermeneutic of The Kairos Document is a form
of proof-texting, with an emphasis on those traditions which support
the case of the Israelite poor. It does not rise to the challenge of
reading the Scriptures with Canaanite eyes.
Conclusion
The Afrikaner nationalist political mythology which had been created
at the turn of the century was crumbling. We have seen how Afrikaner
nationalism created, sustained and modified political mythologies to
further its goals, and how each constituent element of the nationalist
myth did not stand up to the test of historical and anthropological
investigation. The myth of a vacant land for a landless people was
dislodged by the evidence for a black African population in the region
since early in the Christian era. The Boers who had taken up arms
against the Cape colonial government in 1815 were deviants rather
than heroes. The uncertain circumstances of the vow of 1838 made its
historical reliability suspect. Moreover, virtually all historians work-
ing on the nineteenth century now reject the still commonly held view
that the Afrikaners who embarked on the Great Trek considered
themselves to be sanctioned to dispossess the indigenous black popu-
lation, after the fashion of the Israelites whom the biblical accounts
present as having been mandated by the divinity to cleanse Canaan of
its population.
8
Moreover, the biological basis for racism and crude
theories of racial differentiation were discarded, and both imperialism
and discrimination based solely on ethnic difference were widely
rejected internationally, making the practice of racism virtually
unique to South Africa.
In South African society, in which there was a coalition between
religion and the state, religion provided a transcendent referent for
the exercise of political sovereignty. However, while the prevailing
Dutch Reformed theology underpinned apartheid, the theological and
biblical assault against it also undermined its viability for much
longer. In effect, the whole racist paradigm was under terminal strain
in many quarters, not least among the whites, including Afrikaners.
Thus, all the elements of the nationalist mythology had to face the
challenge of new information from archaeology, historical study, sci-
entific discovery and theological and biblical rethinking. Afrikaner
nationalism was increasingly less secure, intellectually as well as
morally.
When historical and other kinds of investigation invalidate the
claims of harmful myths, there is a responsibility to discredit them
and to ensure that false fabrications of the past are not employed in a
deleterious fashion. Biblical scholars accept such responsibility with
some hesitation. Deist, for example, concludes his study:
Perhaps Deuteronomy does contain dangerous ideologies and therefore
might very well be a dangerous book. But the greater danger lies in its
(uncritical) readers. In so far as the tragic history of South Africa and the
still threatening national disaster have been the result of Biblical interpre-
tation, this tragedy is the consequence not so much of wrong or danger-
ous exegetical methods ... but the result of a lack of critical self-awareness
on the part of the exegetes. The South African experience points to the
critical importance of a heavy emphasis on reader oriented hermeneutical
approaches and the creation of a critical consciousness of the historicity of
any piece of literature and any form of interpretation, and therefore on the
ethics of interpretation (1994: 28-29, my italics).
While Deist points up the problem which the biblical text presents to a
reader, he is reluctant to concede that the book of Deuteronomy in
itself is a dangerous book since it predicates racist, xenophobic and
8. The myth finds popular expression in De Klerk 1975, Villet 1982, and
others. and in James Michener's novel The Covenant (1980).
militaristic tendencies as deriving from the will of God. He deals with
the problem by exonerating the biblical authors and by ascribing to
the reader alone any morally dubious predispositions.
Reflecting the black experience, however, Mofokeng goes to the
heart of the matter. Black people of South Africa point to three
dialectically related realities:
They show the central position which the Bible occupied in the ongoing
process of colonization, national oppression and exploitation. They also
confess the incomprehensible paradox of being colonised by a Christian
people and yet being converted to their religion and accepting the Bible,
their ideological instrument of colonization, oppression and exploitation.
Thirdly, they express a historic commitment that is accepted solemnly by
one generation and passed onto another-a commitment to terminate
exploitation of humans by other humans (Mofokeng 1988: 34).
He goes on:
When Black christians see all these conservative and reactionary efforts
and hear the Bible being quoted in support of reactionary causes they real-
ize that the Bible itself is a serious problem to people who want to be free
(1988: 37).
Mofokeng contends that there are numerous traditions in the Bible
which lend themselves only to oppressive interpretations and oppres-
sive uses precisely because of their inherently oppressive nature. He
goes on to say that any attempt to 'save' or 'co-opt' these oppressive
texts for the oppressed only serves the interests of the oppressors.
Young blacks, he adds, have identified the Bible as an oppressive doc-
ument by its very nature and its very core, and call for its displace-
ment (Mofokeng 1988: 38).
9
9. On the positive side, West and Draper report on the activities of the recently
founded South African Institute for the Study of the Bible, which attempts to develop
an interface between biblical studies and ordinary readers of the Bible ( 1991: 369-
70). They draw attention to the very impressive work being done by the collaboration
of a great number of institutions in the land.
Chapter 4
COLONIALISM AND PALESTINE
The matrix of elements within the broad ideology of Zionism
1
is no
less complex than in Afrikaner nationalism, and while the ideologies
share much in common, they represent different social contexts. It is
of interest to enquire into whether Zionist historians fabricated Jewish
history in a manner analogous to what we have seen in the case of
Afrikaner ideologues. In the case of Zionism, the role of the Bible
will be of particular interest, since whatever justification the European
settlers in South America and South Africa had for deploying it as
a legitimating charter for their settler colonization, Jews appear to
require less defence. However, overt appeal to the Bible in under-
pinning Zionist nationalism was not prominent from the beginning
until the wake of the 1967 War. My investigation will suggest that the
concept of the fabrication of national myths of origin helps to under-
stand the nature of the biblical text itself. Although this study is a
moral critique of the Bible and colonialism, it is necessary to establish
the social context in which the discussion takes place. Therefore, as in
the other examples, it is instructive to review the developments from
the birth of Zionism to the present day.
The Early Phase of Zionism (1896-1917)
While Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) was not the first to lay down plans
for the migration of Jews from Europe to Palestine, nor the first to
suggest the establishment of a state for Jews, he was the one who most
systematically planned the elevation into practice of his vision, and
nobody matches him in his attention to its practical implementation. It
1. The term Zionism in its modern sense was used for the first time by Nathan
Birnbaum in 1890 (Bein 1961: 33).
4. Colonialism and Palestine 107
is appropriate, therefore, to examine both his utopian dream and his
strategy to realize it.
Herzl interested himself in the Jewish Question as early as 1881 or
1882 (Herzl 1960, 1: 4),
2
and while in Vienna he had considered mass
Jewish conversion to Catholicism as a solution to the problem of being
a Jew in European society (Herzl 1960, 1: 7). By 1895 he judged the
efforts to combat anti-Semitism to be futile (Herzl 1960, 1: 6). He
composed the first draft of Der Judenstaat between June and July
1895, and on 17 November explained his ideas to Dr Max Nordau in
Paris, who reacted enthusiastically.
3
The public degradation of
Captain Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jew on the French general staff, wrongly
convicted of selling military secrets to the Germans (5 January 1896),
signalled for Herzl the end of the enterprise to assimilate Jews into
European society and confirmed him as a Zionist. On 17 January 1896
the Jewish Chronicle published his article 'A "Solution of the Jewish
Question"'. The editorial was sceptical: 'We hardly anticipate a great
future for a scheme which is the outcome of despair.' In February,
Herzl published the full statement of his programme.
The Vision and its Underpinning
Herzl argued that the solution to the Jewish question could be achieved
only through 'the restoration of the Jewish State' (1988: 69).
4
He
insisted that Jews constituted one people (pp. 76, 79), and spoke of the
distinctive nationality of Jews (p. 79). Wherever they were, they were
destined to be persecuted (pp. 75-78). Anti-Semitism for Herzl was a
national question, more than a social, civil rights or religious issue, and
2. Herzl began his diaries in (Pentecost) 1895 and continued until shortly before
his death. All seven volumes of the letters and diaries have been published, the first
three edited by Johannes Wachten et al. (1983-85), and the remaining four by
Barbara Schafer ( 1990-96). The most complete English translation is in the five vol-
umes edited by Raphael Patai. In general, I quote from Patai's edition (rendered
Herzl 1960), which I have checked against the original in Wachten and Schafer.
Where I judge it to be important, I give the original German etc. from the latter
(rendered Herzl 1983-96). I indicate the volume number of the English translation by
1, 2, etc., and the German ones by I, II, etc.
3. Invariably, the items of Herzl's affairs I note are described fully in his
Diaries, at the appropriate date, for example, in this case in the complete German edi-
tion, vol. II, 277-78.
4. Quotes in what follows are from the The Jewish State (New York: Dover,
1988).
could be solved only by making it a political world-question (p. 76).
While Herzl's appeal to religious motivation was sparse, he did have
recourse to the phrase, Next year in Jerusalem (p. 82). The heart of
his plan was that 'sovereignty be granted us over a portion of the
globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation'
(p. 92). Jews could rely on the governments of all countries scourged
by anti-Semitism to assist them obtain that sovereignty (p. 93). He
looked to the Powers to admit Jewish sovereignty over a neutral piece
of land. Jews could bring the present possessors of the land enormous
advantages, and the creation of a Jewish state would be beneficial to
adjacent countries also (p. 95). In discussing whether the state should
be established in Argentina or Palestine, he said, 'Palestine is our
ever-memorable historic home. The very name Palestine would attract
our people with a force of marvellous potency' (p. 96).
The Jewish state would be 'a portion of the rampart of Europe
agrunst-Asia, an outpost of civilization opposed to barbarism' (p. 96).
Herzl adds, 'The Temple will be visible from long distances, for it is
only our ancient faith that has kept us together' (p. 102). He appealed
for the support of the rabbis, and foresaw that getting Jews to emi-
grate would be difficult (p. 129). He asserted, 'Our community of race
is peculiar and unique, for we are bound together only by the faith of
our fathers' (p. 146). But the Jewish state would not be a theocracy:
'We shall keep our priests within the confines of their temples in the
same way as we keep our professional army within the confines of
their barracks' (p. 146).
5
Herzl's final words were:
I believe that a wondrous generation of Jews will spring into existence.
The Maccabeans will rise again ... The Jews who wish for a State will
have it. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peace-
fully in our own homes. The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched
by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt
there to accomplish for our own welfare, will react powerfully and
beneficially for the good of humanity (pp. 156-57).
Herzl' s proposal met with considerable opposition, not least from
Chief Rabbi Moritz Gtidemann of Vienna, who maintained that the
5. On 8 May 1896, the hassid Ahron Marcus informed him that it was likely that
3 million hassidic Poles would support the venture. Herzl replied that the support of
the Orthodox would be very welcome, but that a theocracy would not be created: 'Die
Mitwirkung der Orthodoxen noch willkommen ist-aber Theokratie wird nicht
gemacht' (II, 340).
Jews were not a nation, and that Zionism was incompatible with the
teachings of Judaism.
6
On the Zionist side, his critics found little spe-
cifically Jewish about the state he envisaged. Herzl's tactics would
combine mobilizing the Jews with negotiating with the imperial
powers, and colonization. Intensive diplomatic negotiations at the
highest level, and propaganda on the largest scale would be necessary
(11 May 1896, Herzl 1983-96: II, 340-41). He obtained audiences
with the Sultan, the Kaiser, the Pope, King Victor Emmanuel,
Chamberlain, prominent Tsarists and with many other key figures.
Herzl acknowledged that the notions of chosen people and return to
the promised land would be potent factors in mobilizing Jewish opin-
ion, despite the fact that the leading Zionists were either non-reli-
gious, atheists or agnostics. On 6 March 1897 the Zionsverein decided
upon a Zionist Congress in Munich for August, but the Munich Jews
refused to host it. The rabbis, representing all shades of opinion,
denounced Zionism as a fanaticism, and contrary to the Jewish scrip-
tures, and affirmed their loyalty to Germany. Moreover, the executive
committee of the German Rabbinical Council 'formally and publicly
condemned the "efforts of the so-called Zionists to create a Jewish
national state in Palestine" as contrary to Holy Writ' (Vital1975: 336).
Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress (29-31 August 1897) in
Basle. On the day before the Congress, though non-religious, Herzl
attended a synagogue service, having been prepared for the reading of
the Law (Vital 1975: 355). The purpose of the Congress, he declared
in his speech, was to lay the foundation stone of the house to shelter
the Jewish nation, and advance the interests of civilization:
7
It is more and more to the interest of the civilized nations and of civiliza-
tion in general that a cultural station be established on the shortest road to
Asia. Palestine is this station and we Jews are the bearers of culture who
are ready to give our property and our lives to bring about its creation ...
Zionism seeks to secure for the Jewish people a publicly recognized,
legally secured [bffentlich-rechtlich] home in Palestine for the Jewish
people.
6. Nationaljudentum (Leipzig and Vienna, 1897), p. 42, quoted in Laqueur
1972: 96.
7. Herzl's own words are: 'In drei Tagen haben wir vie! Wichtiges zu besorgen.
Wir wollen den Grundstein legen zu dem Haus, das dereinst die jiidische Nation
behebergen wird (Protokoll des I. Zionistenkongresses in Basel vom 29. his 31.
August I 897. Prag 1911. Selbstverlag-Druck von Richard Brandeis in Prag, p. 15).
The Congress also formed the World Zionist Organization, and on the
final day adopted the motion in principle to establish a fund to acquire
Jewish territory which 'shall be inalienable and cannot be sold even to
individual Jews; it can only be leased for periods of forty-nine years
maximum' (in Lehn 1988: 18), the 49 years reflecting the divine
provenance of land possession (Leviticus 25).
8
Herzl envisaged that the European powers would endorse Zionism
for imperialist self-interest, to rid themselves of Jews and anti-
Semitism and to use organized Jewish influence to combat revolution-
ary movements. After the Congress, Herzl wrote in his diary
(3 September),
If I were to sum up the congress in a word-which I shall guard against
pronouncing publicly-it would be this: At Basle I founded the Jewish
state. If I said this out loudly today, I would be greeted by universal
laughter. Perhaps in five years, and certainly in fifty, everyone will know
it (Herzl1960, 2: 581).
Herzl and his party landed at Jaffa on 26 October 1898 and toured the
Jewish settlements of Palestine. Jerusalem made a terrible impression
on him, with its musty deposits of 2000 years of inhumanity, intol-
erance and uncleanness lying in the foul-smelling little streets
(31 October, 1983-96: II, 680).
On 2 November 1898, Herzl was received at his headquarters out-
side Jerusalem by the German emperor, Wilhelm II, after which he
realized that the Zionist goal would not be achieved under German
protection. In May 1901 he had an audience with Sultan Abdul Hamid
and promised that Jews would help him pay his foreign debt and pro-
mote the country's industrialization. The Sultan promised lasting pro-
tection if the Jews would seek refuge in Turkey as citizens. Further
meetings with the Sultan followed in February and July 1902. How-
ever, Herzl was not able to raise a fraction of the money involved, and
he decided to open negotiations with Britain.
Because of its interests in neighbouring Arab countries and in
securing the overland route to India, Britain would avail of Herzl' s
proposal for a joint Anglo-Zionist partnership involving colonial con-
cessions for Jews in Cyprus, El Arish and the Sinai Peninsula. Herzl
8. The Fifth Zionist Congress in Basle (29-31 December 1901) established the
Jewish National Fund (JNF). From the beginning the JNF was an instrument for the
realization of a Jewish state.
met Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, on 22 October 1902,
and explained that in patronizing the Zionist endeavour the British
Empire would have ten million agents for her greatness and her
influence all over the world, bringing political and economic benefits
(1983-96: III, 469). In this quid pro quo, England would undertake to
protect the Jewish state and world Jewry would advance British inter-
ests, with the Jewish settler state becoming its client. On the following
day (24 October), Herzl wrote that yesterday was a great day in
Jewish history.
In August 1903, Herzl discussed with the Tsarist government the
speeding up of the emigration of Russian Jews. He argued that the
European powers would support Jewish colonization in Palestine not
only because of the historic right guaranteed in the Bible, but because
of the European inclination to let Jews go. Earlier, Chamberlain had
raised the option of Jews settling in Uganda, which was discussed at
length at the Sixth Zionist Congress at Basle (22-28 August 1903).
Herzl and Nordau emphasized that Uganda would only be a staging
post to the ultimate goal of Palestine, but, fearing that the issue
might split the Zionist movement, Herzl reiterated the Zionist
programme by lifting his right hand and saying, 'Im Yeshkakhekh
Yerushalayim ... ' (If I forget you, 0 Jerusalem, may my right hand
wither), quoting Ps. 137.5 (Laqueur 1972: 129). The Seventh
Congress, at which Herzl was not present, officially buried the Uganda
scheme.
With failing health, Herzl visited Rome on 23 January 1904 and met
King Victor Emanuel III and Pius X. To his request for a Jewish state
in Tripoli, the king replied, 'Ma e ancora casa di altri' (But it is
already the home of other people) (Herzl 1983-96: III, 653). Neither
Pope Pius X nor the Secretary of State, Cardinal Merri del Val, con-
sidered it proper to support the Zionist intentions in any way (Herzl
1960, 4: 1602-603), opposing it on religious grounds (Kreutz 1990:
33). Herzl made the last entry in his diaries on 16 May 1904. He died
in Edlach on 3 July. On the day of his burial Zangwill compared him
with Moses, who had been vouchsafed only a sight of the promised
land. But, like Moses, Herzl 'has laid his hands upon the head of more
than one Joshua, and filled them with the spirit of his wisdom to carry
on his work' (Zangwill1937: 131-32).
Critique of Herzl
Herzl provided the inspiration, the leadership and the organization of
the Zionist movement, reflected in Ben-Gurion's proclamation of the
State of Israel (14 May 1948) under his portrait and the transfer of his
remains to Jerusalem in 1949. His genius lay not in his analysis of the
plight of the Jews, nor in the clarity of his vision for a solution, but in
his elevation of the plan into action, through his remarkable organiza-
tional and diplomatic skills. He was very much a man of action, a
'Tatmensch', as Martin Buber put it. At various times people referred
to him as the Messiah, or King of Israel, and as the fulfilment of the
prophecies of the Jewish Scriptures. His diaries and letters reflect his
indefatigable zeal in searching out all possible ways of winning sup-
port to his cause. To have met the Kaiser, the Sultan, a king, and the
Pope, and have dealt with them as though he were the leader of a state
was no mean achievement. His early death ensured that he could be
embraced by all factions within the broad Zionist and Israeli camp.
Herzl's motivation was not dictated by a religious longing for the
ancient homeland, nor by appeal to biblical injunctions, for example,
to go to the Promised Land in order to carry out the mitzvot. His
Zionism had much in common with the notion of Pan-Germanism,
with its emphasis on das Volk: all persons of German race, blood or
descent, wherever they lived, and under whatever political system,
owed their primary loyalty to Germany, the Heimat. For Herzl, Jews,
wherever they lived, constituted a distinct nation, whose success could
be advanced only by establishing a Jewish nation state. The
Renaissance and Reformation had helped to create new societies and
states which challenged the mediaeval idea of world empire. However,
while the basic assumption of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
European nationalisms was the indigenous nature of a specific com-
munity and its desire for independence from the imperial power,
Zionists had no such context. The Jewish claim to construct a separate
state like every other nation amounted to special pleading.
The rights of the indigenous people never featured in Herzl' s plans.
The discourse proceeded as if Palestine were a terra nullius at the free
disposal of the Powers. Notwithstanding, he knew what was needed to
establish a state for Jews in a land already inhabited. Among the items
of his diary entry for 12 June 1895 we find,
When we occupy the land, we shall bring immediate benefits to the state
that receives us. We must expropriate gently the private property on the
4. Colonialism and Palestine
estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population
across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries
while denying it any employment in our own country.
9
The property
owners will come to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the
removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly
(Herzll960, 1: 87-88).
113
Before spiriting them away, however, he envisaged that the Zionists
would be forced to use native labour, especially when fever attacked
the workers, a fate from which he wished to protect the Zionists.
The Background to Herzl's Vision and Plan
While a certain longing for Zion was present at virtually all periods
of Jewish history, as reflected in the prayer book exclamation, Next
Year in Jerusalem, a pious longing for Jerusalem and its lamented
Temple is not e confused with the desire to establish a nation state
for Jews in Palestine. The Zionist aspiration was prompted by a host
of nationalist movements within the turbulent politics of Europe since
the French Revolution, and was a retort to the hope that civic emanci-
pation would solve the Jewish

Although there were sub-
stantial differences between it and other European nationalist and
imperialist movements, Zionism was a product of both of them.
Several factors acted as catalysts for some Jews to promote the ideal
of settlement in Palestine after so many centuries of passivity: the lure
of assimilation, the rise of anti-Semitism, the appearance of racist the-
ories in Germany, the pogroms in Russia in 1881-82, etc. However,
these alone do not account for the movement to Zion, since even in the
face of persecution in different places, Jews had emigrated to other
countries, but not to Palestine. It is estimated that while almost three
million Jews emigrated from Russia between 1882 and 1914 as a
result of the Russian pogroms and the anti-Semitic policies of the
Tsarist government, only about one per cent went to Palestine
(Avineri 1981: 5).
Throughout their history Jews displayed a remarkable unity which
9. 'Die arme BevO!kerung trachten wir unbemerkt tiber die Grenze zu schaffen,
indem wir in den Durchzugslandern Arbeit verschaffen aber in unserem eigenen
Lande jederlei Arbeit verweigern' ( 1983-96: II, 117 -18).
10. About 90 per cent of the world's 2.5 million Jews lived in Europe at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. There was a significant increase in the world
Jewish population from the fifteenth century untill939.
derived from a strong attachment to shared religious values. But the
scientific spirit promoted by Descartes, Locke and Newton in the sev-
enteenth century which issued in the Enlightenment fundamentally
challenged Jewish identity. Its Wissenschaft was characterized by
autonomous, critical, historical enquiry, which pursued truth through
reason, observation and experiment unhindered by dogma, tradition
or a hierarchy higher than autonomous reason. The movement, in
general, was suspicious of, and often hostile to the claims of religion.
Discrimination was a problem in several regions and expressed
itself in intermittent persecution. But since the French National
Assembly voted for the recognition of Jews as citizens and the
removal of existing restrictions (28 September 1791), their lot
changed for the better. By 1860, the equality of Jews was generally
accepted in Europe (Halpern 1969: 4). Indeed, the nineteenth century
was the best century they had experienced, collectively and individu-
ally, since the destruction of the Temple: from being a marginal
community in the early part of the century, Jews had become the great
beneficiaries of the Enlightenment, Emancipation and the Industrial
Revolution within a hundred years (Avineri 1981: 5-6).
The danger, however, was that European Jews would be assimi-
lated, a term with overtones of xenophobia and superiority. The
Enlightenment and Emancipation provided a climate in which some
Jews discarded some of the practices which were the 'mortar keeping
the building together'. Western Jews insisted that they were not a sep-
arate nation, but a religious body, which denied any intention to
'return to Zion' (Halpern 1969: 10). Wilhelm Marr, the first to use
the term antisemitism,
11
complained that Jewish influence had already
penetrated too far into European economic life (Laqueur 1972: 28-
29). While the 1850s and 1860s were a happy period for Jews in
11. In popular usage the disparaging epithet anti-Semitic is applied with little dis-
crimination to a perpetrator of any form of perceived anti-Jewishness, covering the
spectrum from Hitler's Final Solution to a human rights' critique of the behaviour of
the State of Israel. The term is imprecise and problematic. The eighteenth-century
division of peoples into racial categories reflected patterns of similarity between lan-
guages. Because similarities between one group of languages were detected, they
were clustered within a category of Semitic languages. On that basis, a specific
people (race?), Semites, was designated, introducing the terms Semitic and anti-
Semitic. The terms Judaeophobia or Jew-hatred are more apposite. The Nazi hatred
for Jews is more appropriately conveyed by the German terms, Judenhass, or
Judenfeindschaft.
Germany, hostility increased by the 1870s. The mood in Russia was
assimilationist in the 1860s and 1870s, and Jewish pride in Russia was
very strong, but the pogroms of the 1880s dealt a severe blow to the
hopes for total assimilation.
Although Herzl does not appear to have been influenced by his ideo-
logical predecessors, the surfacing of Zionist ideas in several places in
the nineteenth century made the reception of his programme less for-
bidding. The growth in acceptance of a 'Jewish Return' to Palestine
was facilitated by Byron's Hebrew Melodies, Disraeli's Tancred and
George Eliot's Daniel Deronda (1876).
12
In Germany in 1840, an
anonymous pamphlet accepted the idea of a Jewish state but rejected
Palestine for practical reasons. The author proposed Arkansas or
Oregon, in which $10 million would buy a territory the size of
France, where Jews could show their full potential.
13
Another anony-
mous piece, in Orient, 27 June 1840, argued that the best solution to
the plight of Jews in Europe was an early return to Palestine, where
the Sultan and Mehmet Ali could be persuaded to protect them.
One detects a development of ideas for which the establishment of a
nation state could be the logical outcome. Heinrich Graetz (1817 -91)
contributed more than most to the view of Jews as a nation (Avineri
1981: 35). He insisted that Judaism required concrete and manifest
expression, and that its interwoven religious and political nature
would require territorial manifestation.
14
If the Law was the spirit of
Judaism, and the Jewish people its historical subject, the Holy Land
was its material foundation, giving the triad
The Torah
The Nation of Israel

The Holy Land
12. On 7 June 1895 Herzl determined to read it: 'Daniel Deronda lesen. Teweles
spricht davon. Ich kenn's noch nicht' (I, 71). Zangwill claimed that it was Eliot who
invented Zionism (1920: 78).
13. Neujudiia: Entwwf zum Wiederaujbau eines Selbstandigen jildischen Staates
von C.L.K.
14. Between 1853 and 1876 Graetz published his eleven-volume Geschichte der
Juden von den iiltesten Zeiten his auf die Gegenwart, which was translated into
several European languages.
He regarded these three elements as standing in a mystical relationship
to each other, inseparably united by an invisible bond. Without corpo-
rate, national life in the land, Judaism, he asserted, could never be
more than a shadow of its reality (see Avineri 1981: 28-29).
The growth of chauvinistic nationalism in nineteenth-century
Europe provided a catalyst for Jewish nationalism. Inspired by
Giuseppe Mazzini's Rome and the rise of Italian nationalism, the Rom
und Jerusalem: Die letzte Nationalitiitenfrage (1862) of Moses Hess
(1812-7 5) predicted the liberation of the Eternal City on Mount
Moriah, after the fashion of the liberation of the Eternal City on the
Tiber (Avineri 1981: 39-42).
15
In Hess's judgment, Jews were not
simply a religious group, but were a separate nation, a special race
which should avoid assimilation and reassert its uniqueness by recon-
stituting a national centre as a Jewish, model socialist commonwealth
in Palestine. While Hess's views were unknown to either Pinsker or
Herzl, their aspirations reappear in Jewish nationalist-socialist tenden-
cies later.
While the Orthodox religious establishment retained its traditional
approach to the notion of redemption and its messianic ambience, two
Orthodox rabbis suggested a more active role for Jews in bringing
redemption forward. In his Minhat Yehuda (1845), Rabbi Judah
Alkalai of Bosnia (1788-1878) gave a territorial dimension to tradi-
tional messianic redemption. While retaining traditional teleology,
that final, supernatural redemption would be brought about by the
Messiah, he argued that the physical return of the Jews to Zion must
precede the Redeemer's advent. Alkalai supported his proposals with
biblical and talmudic texts, thereby deflecting the charge that he was
'Forcing the End of Days' (Dehikat ha-Ketz). He proposed the revival
of spoken Hebrew, the establishment of a Perpetual Fund (Keren
Kaye met) and a representative assembly of Jews (A vineri 1981: 50-
51). In 1857 he called for the establishment of a Jewish state, and was,
perhaps the first to do so. In old age he emigrated to Jerusalem.
As early as 1832, Rabbi Zwi Hirsch Kalischer of Posen (1795-
1874) also declared that the redemption of Zion would have to begin
with action on the part of the Jewish people, and that the messianic
15. The earlier Hess had judged that Jews had a future only if as individuals they
broke from their group identity and became citizens of the world. His 'New
Jerusalem', based on nationalism rather than religion, would be built in the heart of
Europe, not in Palestine.
miracle would then follow. In the same year as Hess's pamphlet
(1862), he published Derishat Zion (Seeking Zion), which had much
in common with the views of Alkalai, but while reaching the same
broad conclusions as Hess, had a very different ideological frame-
work. His starting point was the Bible, the Mishnah and the Talmud.
The Redemption of Israel, for which we long, is not to be imagined as a
sudden miracle. The Almighty, blessed be His Name, will not suddenly
descend from on high and command His people to go forth. Neither will
he send the Messiah in a twinkling of an eye, to sound the great trumpet
for the scattered of Israel and gather them into Jerusa1em ... The
Redemption of Israel will come by slow degree and the ray of deliverance
will shine forth gradually (Kalischer, in Avineri 1981: 53).
Settlement of Jews in the land of Israel would hasten the Day of
Redemption. It should take the form of self-supporting agricultural
communities, which would make it possible to observe the religious
commandments related to working the land (mitzvot ha-teluyot ba-
aretz): 'As we bring redemption to the land in this-worldly way, the
ray of heavenly deliverance will gradually appear' (in Avineri 1981:
54).
Kalischer and Alkalai showed how it was possible to unite the
nationalist and emancipationist spirit of the age with the traditions of
rabbinic Judaism. Each subjected the doctrine of passive messianism to
the influence of the vibrant aspirations for cultural and national iden-
tity with which their immediate culture was surrounded. The task of
Jews was to take the first steps, and speed the coming of the Messiah's
redemption.
16
Although Alkalai and Kalischer were lone voices in the
Orthodox rabbinate in the nineteenth century, they showed how it was
possible to reinterpret Jewish identity and aspirations in a world
which was changing drastically around them. Their stress on collec-
tive Jewish cultural and religious identity coincided with the aspira-
tions of Zionists later in the century, whose cultural roots were within
the secularized, nationalist traditions of nineteenth-century Europe,
more than within traditional religious ones.
Leo Pinsker (1821-91), one of the leading exponents of assimila-
tion, had his confidence in the future of Jews in Russia dented by the
16. A corresponding tension was manifest within Christian theology about the
role of Christians who awaited the Second Coming of Christ. See, for example, the
contrasting views of Albrecht Ritschl (1822-89) and that of his son-in-Jaw, Johannes
Weiss (1843-1914).
Odessa riots of 1871, and destroyed by the pogroms of 1881.
Unaware of the work of Hess, he published a pamphlet anonymously,
arguing that anti-Semitism was an hereditary psychosis, which was
incurable (1882).
17
Being at home nowhere, Jews were strangers par
excellence. Many Jews did not aspire to independent national existence
in the same way as sick people have no desire for food. Russian Jews
would have to emigrate to escape their parasitical condition and settle
in a home of their own. The time was ripe for the organized societies
of Jews to convene a national congress with a view to purchasing a
territory for the settlement of millions of Jews, for which the support
of the Powers would be necessary to guarantee stability. Since the
Holy Land could not be the target, a land of our own could be any-
where, whether in North America or Asiatic Turkey.
Several Jews openly canvassed the idea of settling in Palestine and
reviving Hebrew as a living language. Already in 1877, the poet
Y ehuda Leib Gordon anonymously wrote a pamphlet proposing the
establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine under British suzerainty.
18
Eliezer Perlman (Ben Yehuda) called for the revival of Hebrew as the
spoken language, which could take place only in Palestine. Judging
that Jews would always be aliens, Moshe Leib Lilienblum (1834-
1910) declared, 'We need a comer of our own. We need Palestine,'
and from 1881 he advocated the purchase of land in Palestine.
Already in 1878-79, there had been an attempt by a group of
Orthodox Jews from Jerusalem to establish an agricultural settlement,
Petah Tiqvah, on 3000 dunums (a dunum being 1000 square metres,
that is, about one-quarter of an acre), north-east of Jaffa. Although
the attempt failed, the move inspired some from Russia, who turned
out to be no more skilled in agriculture (Lehn 1988: 9). After the
Russian pogroms of 1881, Russian and Romanian Jewish immigration
to Palestine increased, with the first settlement of fourteen families in
August 1882 on 3200 dunums south-east of Jaffa, at Rishon le-
Tsiyyon. In the same year, about 200 Romanian emigrants established
Zikhron Y a' aqov near the coast, south of Haifa, and 50 Romanian
families established Rosh Pinnah east of Safed. These were followed
by other settlers, so that by the end of 1884 there were eight new
Jewish villages with a total population in 1890 of 2415. In all, the
17. Autoemanzipation, ein Mahnruf an seine Stammesgenossen, von einem
russischen Juden.
18. Die jiidische Frage in der orientalischen Frage.
immigration to Palestine in the First Aliya of 1882-1903 represented
just under 3 per cent of the full emigration of Jews from Europe
(Vital 1975: 93, 99-1 00).
An offshoot of the Lovers of Zion in Russia, the so-called Biluim
(the plural of an acronym of the opening words of Isa. 2.5, bylw, '0
house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of Yahweh!'), came to
the conclusion that the only solution to the discrimination against Jews
in Russia was national renaissance through the establishment of a
Jewish state in Palestine. Although only 14 Biluim immigrated in July
1882, and reached at most 20 by the end of 1884, they achieved an
importance out of proportion to their numbers. Their programme
involved the establishment of self-sustaining, exclusively Hebrew-
speaking Jewish colonies, employing no non-Jewish worker.
Of course, it would be even easier to identify a pantheon of anti-
Zionist champions than it has been to construct one of Zionist heroes
in the nineteenth century, and to fashion a catena of relevant proof
texts to support one's case. However, unless one can demonstrate a
cause-and-effect relationship between the elements of each list, one
may not legitimately regard an earlier argument as a development
towards its inevitable consummation in a particular form of Jewish
living. We return to the conclusion that what distinguished Herzl from
his predecessors was his ability to chart out the stages of his utopian
vision and his remarkable determination to see that they would be
carried through.
Zionism and European Imperialism
The early Zionists realized the necessity of winning the support of at
least one of the major Europeans powers, whose own agenda might
favour the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Throughout the
Ottoman period, international politics entered into the controversies
surrounding Jerusalem and the Holy Places (O'Mahony 1994: 13).
Britain stationed a consular agent in Jerusalem in 1838, and on the
religious front a Protestant (Anglican) bishopric in Jerusalem was
established in 1841 (El-Assal 1994: 131-32). Britain's interest increas-
ed as a result of her acquisition of territories in India, and the need to
ensure safe and speedy overland communication. Moreover, she
wished to protect her trade with the Persian Gulf region, as well as to
keep Mohammad 'Ali of Egypt in his place.
19
Throughout the second
19. 'The Jewish people, if returning under the sanction and protection and at the
half of the century, the expansion in Church institutions in the Holy
Land reflected renewed international interest.
Britain occupied Egypt in 1882, and in the years before the out-
break of the Great War, had set its sights on Iraq. Meanwhile, in anti-
cipation of the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, the French invested
heavily in Syria. This was part of the wider colonial context in which
Zionism was emerging, a context in which the European powers pre-
sumed on their superiority over others and their right to exploit
natives. Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist leader and later first President
of Israel put his case as follows:
We can reasonably say that should Palestine fall within the British sphere
of influence, and should Britain encourage Jewish settlement there, as a
British dependency, we could have in twenty to thirty years a million
Jews out there, perhaps more; they would develop the country, bring back
civilization to it and form a very effective guard for the Suez Canal (Letter
to Manchester Guardian, November 1914, in Weizmann 1949: 149).
W eizmann realized that Britain had much to gain from supporting
Zionism. He considered it self-evident that England needed Palestine
for the safeguarding of the approaches to Egypt, and that if Palestine
were thrown open for the settlement of Jews, 'England would have an
effective barrier, and we would have a country' (letter to Zangwill on
10 October 1914, in Stein 1961: 14-15).
The First World War
The entry of the Ottoman Empire into the war in October 1914 had a
profound impact on future developments in the Middle East. When
Turkey became an enemy, the British Government, fearing a hostile
Pan-Islamic opposition led by the Ottoman Sultan-Caliph, favoured a
Muslim centre relatively independent of Istanbul, preferably under
British influence, and looked to the Sharif of Mecca, Husayn ibn 'Ali
to advance its interests. The Sharif agreed, on condition that when the
Turks were defeated, the British would support Arab independence in
the whole of the Arabian Peninsula (with the exception of Aden),
Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Trans-Jordan and Iraq (Ingrams 1972: 1-2).
Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, with
invitation of the Sultan, would be a check upon any future evil designs of
Mohammed Ali or his successor' (my italics; Viscount Palmerston to Viscount
Ponsonby, 2 August 1840, Foreign Office 79/390 [No. 134], Public Record Office).
certain important reservations, agreed on 24 October 1915 'to recog-
nise and support the independence of the Arabs within the territories
included in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Sharif of
Mecca', that is, from Cilicia in the north to the Indian Ocean in the
south, and from the Mediterranean to Iran (Letter to the Sharif, in
Yapp 1987: 279).
Nevertheless, in the Sykes-Picot Agreement between France and
Britain (3 January 1916) France was given carte blanche in Cilicia,
coastal Syria and Lebanon, and Britain given Basra and Baghdad, and
the southern region of the Middle East. Britain would also acquire
Haifa and Acre, with the rest of Palestine being placed under an
undefined international administration. Among the differences between
the terms of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the letter from McMahon
to Husayn were the status of Iraq, the degree of independence of the
Arab state(s), the position of Haifa and the status of Palestine. The
absence of reference to Palestine in the McMahon letter suggests that
it would presumably fall within the Arab state(s), whereas in the
Sykes-Picot Agreement it was to be internationalized. However,
whether or not Britain intended to exclude Palestine from the Arab
area, the McMahon to Husayn letter was more a statement of intent
than a formal agreement. More to the point, promises and declarations
of intent made in the heat of war were only to be honoured if they
still seemed profitable at the end of hostilities. Meanwhile, the new
British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, decided on an advance into
Palestine. British forces captured Jerusalem on 9 December 1917
under General Allen by, and had penetrated into Aleppo by September
1918. Since the Ottoman armies began to wane in 1917, and Russian
efforts began to diminish, Britain was on the way to becoming the
dominant Entente power in the region.
Meanwhile, the Zionists had made little progress in winning inter-
national support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, or in
settling large numbers of Jews there before the outbreak of the war.
Estimates of the number of Jews in Palestine at the outbreak of the
war vary from 38,000 to 85,000 Jews, constituting some 5-10 per
cent of the total population,
20
of whom only about half were political
20. There are no exact figures for the number of Jews in Palestine before World
War I. Justin McCarthy's analysis of the demographic situation (1990) concluded
that in 1880 Palestine's population was c. 450,000, of which some 15,000 (less than
5 per cent) were Jews, and by 1914, after the first and second aliyahs, it was
Zionists. Since the Sykes-Picot Agreement deprived France of exer-
cising influence over Palestine, Britain considered the area to be vital
to its strategic interests, being a buffer against Egypt and a means of
protecting the Suez Canal as its route to India, and a link between its
interests there and its hoped-for interests in Iraq. Towards the end of
the war, then, there was a coincidence of interests between the
Zionists and Britain. A Jewish Palestine would serve as a local garri-
son to defend British interests in the Suez Canal, and at the same time
be a loyal political island for the British in a sea of newly-established
independent Arab states. Realizing that Palestinian Arabs would not
acquiesce in the Zionist dream, it was clear that British support would
be necessary to ensure its realization.
The Second Phase of Zionism (1917-1948)
Britain's undertaking to honour both its guarantee of Arab indepen-
dence at the end of the war and the terms of the Sykes-Picot
Agreement would be matched by its no less incompatible determina-
tion both to support the goal of Zionism and to guarantee the rights of
the indigenous Palestinians. I shall trace here only the most significant
developments in political Zionism during the 30 years between the end
of the war and the establishment of the state of Israel. These include
the Balfour Declaration and its elevation into an internationally sup-
ported programme in the Mandate of the League of Nations, and the
UN Partition Plan of 1947.
c. 710,000, of which some 38,000 (still only 5 per cent) were Jews. According to
studies based on Zionist sources there may have been 80,000-85,000. However, as
many as half of the immigrants may have departed again, while others retained their
nationalities rather than become Ottoman subjects (see Khalidi 1988: 213, 231).
Ingrams gives the figures for 1914 as 500,000 Muslims and 60,000 each of Jews
and Christians (1972: 1). The Jewish National Fund, legally established in 1907,
whose primary object was to acquire land for exclusive and inalienable Jewish
settlement, purchased its first Arab-owned land in 1910 from absentee landlords. So
difficult was it to purchase land from small holders that by 1919 it had obtained only
16,366 dunums (Lehn 1988: 30-39). The director of its Palestine office, Arthur
Ruppin ( 1876-1943), promoted economic segregation, as signalled in the axioms of
self-help or self-labour.
Balfour Declaration
Dr Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), elected president of the English
Zionist Federation on 11 February 1917, quickly influenced govern-
ment policy, with a view to having a declaration of support for the
Zionist goal from the British Government. Edwin S. Montague, the
only Jewish member of the Cabinet, who regarded Zionism as a mis-
chievous political creed untenable by any patriotic citizen of the
United Kingdom (Mayhew 1975: 50, in Adams and Mayhew 1975),
argued against such a declaration, and insisted that the project of
creating a Jewish state would end by driving out the present inhabi-
tants (minutes of War Cabinet meeting, 4 October 1917, in Ingrams
1972: 11). At that meeting, Lord Curzon wondered 'how was it pro-
posed to get rid of the existing majority of Mussulman inhabitants and
to introduce the Jews in their place?' He proposed securing equal
rights for Jews already in Palestine as a better policy than repatriation
on a large scale, which he regarded as 'sentimental idealism, which
would never be realized' (Ingrams 1972: 12). The War Cabinet
decided to hear the views of representative Zionist and non-Zionist
Jews, and that a draft of a declaration be submitted confidentially to
President Wilson, leaders of the Zionist Movement and representative
persons in Anglo-Jewry opposed to Zionism (PRO.CAB.23-24, in
Ingrams 1972: 13). Apparently, there was no need to canvas Arab
opinion on the draft declaration. Lord Milner's draft was:
His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in
Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish Race, and will use its best
endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object; it being clearly
understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and
religious rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights
and political status enjoyed in any other country by such Jews who are
fully contented with their existing nationality and citizenship (Ingrams
1972: 12-13).
Chief Rabbi J.H. Herz had 'feelings of the profoundest gratification'
on hearing that His Majesty's Government was to lend its powerful
support to the re-establishment of a national home in Palestine for
Jews. He welcomed the reference to the civil and religious rights of
the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, which, he assured
the Cabinet, was 'but a translation of the basic principle of the Mosaic
legislation: "If a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not
vex [oppress] him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be
unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself''
(Lev. 19.33, 34) (in Ingrams 1972: 13). Lord Rothschild considered
the proviso a slur on Zionism, as it presupposed the possibility of a
danger to non-Zionists. There would be no encroachment on the
rights of the other inhabitants of the country (in Ingrams 1972: 13).
Weizmann requested 'one or two alterations' and suggested three,
including that 're-establishment' replace 'establishment', so that 'the
historical connection with the ancient tradition would be indicated',
and that 'Jewish people' be substituted for 'Jewish race' (in Ingrams
1972: 14). Nahum Sokolov assured the Government that 'The safe-
guards mentioned ... always have been regarded by Zionists as a matter
of course' (in Ingrams 1972: 15).
Other prominent Jews replied, opposing the Zionist programme. Sir
Philip Magnus MP insisted that 'the great bond that unites Israel is not
one of race but the bond of a common religion', and that 'we have no
national aspirations apart from those of the country of our birth'. He
found the reference to 'a national home for the Jewish race' both
undesirable and inaccurate (in Ingrams 1972: 15). C.G. Montefiore,
President of the Anglo-Jewish Association, observed that the emanci-
pation and liberty of the Jewish race in the countries of the world
were a thousand times more important than a 'home' (in Ingrams
1972: 15-16). L.L. Cohen, Chairman of the Jewish Board of
Guardians, stated that he denied that the Jews are a nation, and repu-
diated the implication that Jews are a separate entity unidentified with
the interests of the places where they live (in lngrams 1972: 16).
The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Arthur James Balfour,
assured the War Cabinet on 31 October that a declaration favourable
to Zionism, which would promote extremely useful propaganda in
Russia and America, be made without delay. An independent Jewish
state would follow only after some form of British, American or
other protectorate, as a 'gradual development in accordance with the
ordinary laws of political evolution' (in Ingrams 1972: 17). The
Cabinet authorized Balfour to take a suitable opportunity for making
the declaration, which he did in his letter to Lord Rothschild. The so-
called Balfour Declaration promised the longed-for imperial patron-
age which was required for a Jewish national home:
Dear Lord Rothschild,
Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's
Government, the following Declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist
aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.
'His Majesty's Government view with favour the establish-
ment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,
and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achieve-
ment of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing
shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious
rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or
the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other
country.'
I should be grateful if you would bring this Declaration to the knowledge
of the Zionist Federation.
Yours
Arthur James Balfour
125
The Declaration mentioned neither the name nor the political rights of
the Palestinian Arabs. Balfour acknowledged that at his request the
first draft of the Declaration was drawn up by Rothschild and
Weizmann (PRO F0371/3058, in Ingrams 1972: 9).
According to the Duke of Devonshire, Churchill's successor as
Secretary of State for the Colonies, 'The Balfour Declaration was a
war measure ... designed to secure tangible benefits which it was hoped
could contribute to the ultimate victory of the Allies,' by enlisting
international Jewish support for the Allies and bringing forward the
date of the US entry into the war (PRO.CAB.24/159, in Ingrams
1972: 173). The Arabs saw the Declaration as a betrayal, but a series
of petitions protesting at the injustice of settling another people on the
Arab homeland was brushed aside (Mayhew 1975: 40-41, in Adams
and Mayhew 1975). To support the intention to establish a Jewish
homeland (state), without the consent of the indigenous population,
was an audacious undertaking: 'In this document [Balfour Declaration]
one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a
third' (Koestler 1949: 4). The audacity of the project can be gauged
from the fact that the Jews in Palestine in 1919 constituted no more
than 9.7 per cent of the population and owned 2.04 per cent of the
land (Khalidi 1992: 21).
Weizmann's letter to Balfour on 30 May 1918 reflected racialist and
imperialist values likely to impress him. He wrote of the treacherous,
and blackmailing nature of the Arab, whose Oriental mind was full of
subtleties and subterfuges, compared with the enlightened and honest,
fair and clean-minded English official. Moreover, while the fellah was
at least four centuries behind the times, the effendi was dishonest,
uneducated and greedy, and as unpatriotic as he was inefficient
(Weizmann PRO F0.37113395, quoted in Ingrams 1972: 31-32).
Neither Balfour nor the Powers cared much for the indigenous
population:
In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting
the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country ... The Four Great
Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong,
good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future
hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the
700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion that is
right. . .I do not think that Zionism will hurt the Arab ... Whatever deference
should be paid to the views of those living there, the Powers in their
selection of a mandatory do not propose ... to consult them. In short, so far
as Palestine is concerned, the powers have made no statement of fact
which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at
least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate (Balfour memo
to Lord Curzon, 11 August 1919, PRO.F0.37l/4183, in Ingrams 1972:
73).
The Foreign Office set up a special branch for Jewish propaganda
under the control of A. Hyamson. Propaganda materials were dis-
tributed to virtually every known Jewish community in the world.
Leaflets were dropped over German and Austrian territory, and pam-
phlets in Yiddish were distributed to Jewish soldiers in Central
European armies after the fall of Jerusalem with the message, 'The
hour of Jewish redemption has arrived ... Palestine must be the national
home of the Jewish people once more ... The Allies are giving the Land
of Israel to the people of Israel', encouraging them to stop fighting the
Allies (in Ingrams 1972: 19).
At the suggestion of its Middle East Committee, the War Cabinet
dispatched a Zionist Commission to Palestine to further the intentions
of His Majesty's Government. It was led by Weizmann, who assured
Arabs that,
.. .it was his ambition to see Palestine governed by some stable govern-
ment like that of Great Britain, that a Jewish government would be fatal to
his plans and that it was simply his wish to provide a home for the Jews
in the Holy Land where they could live their own national life, sharing
equal rights with the other inhabitants (Memorandum of Major
Cornwallis, 20 April, in Ingrams 1972: 29).
127
He assured Arabs and Jews in Jaffa that 'It is not our aim to get hold
of the supreme power and administration in Palestine, nor to deprive
any native of his possession' (in Ingrams 1972: 30).
Weizmann displayed his diplomatic versatility at the Foreign Office
on 4 December 1918, assuring Balfour that 'A community of four to
five million Jews in Palestine could radiate out into the near East and
so contribute mightily to the reconstruction of countries which were
once flourishing.' This would require a Jewish national home in
Palestine, 'not mere facilities for colonization ... so that we should be
able to settle in Palestine about four to five million Jews within a gen-
eration, and so make Palestine a Jewish country' (PRO.F0.37113385,
in Ingrams 1972: 46). The attraction of such a proposal for British
interests was considerable. A memorandum by the General Staff at the
War Office, 'The Strategic Importance of Syria to the British Empire'
(9 December 1918), reads, 'The creation of a buffer Jewish state in
Palestine, though this state will be weak in itself, is strategically desir-
able for Great Britain' (PRO.F0.37114178, in Kayyali 1979: 16-17).
Already by 1917, the victory of the allies and the fragmentation of the
Ottoman Empire seemed probable, securing Britain's controlling
influence over Palestine.
On the meaning of Jewish national home, Lloyd George replied to
Weizmann's question, 'We meant a Jewish state.' This was confirmed
also in conversation with the Prime Minister, Balfour, Churchill and
Weizmann: Lloyd George and Balfour always meant an eventual
Jewish state. That the British used homeland rather than state merely
as a tactic to deflect Arab opposition is clear from a memorandum of
Herbert Young, a Foreign Office official in 1921, who wrote that the
problem of coping with Palestinian opposition was 'one of tactics, not
strategy, the general strategic idea ... being the gradual immigration of
Jews into Palestine until that country becomes a predominantly Jewish
state ... But it is questionable whether we are in a position to tell the
Arabs what our policy really means' (cited in Lehn 1988: 326-27
n. 101).
It is clear that homeland was a mere circumlocution for state. While
Herzl himself at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 had defined the
aim of Zionism to be the creation of a home for the Jewish people in
Palestine, he recorded in his diary of 3 September 1897: 'At Basle I
founded the Jewish state' (Herzl 1960, 2: 581). Reflecting the same
ambiguity, Nordau wrote in 1920:
I did my best to persuade the claimants of the Jewish state in Palestine that
we might find a circumlocution that would express all we meant, but
would say it in a way so as to avoid provoking the Turkish rulers of the
coveted land. I suggested Heimstiitte as a synonym for state ... It was
equivocal, but we all understood what it meant. To us it signified
Judenstaat then and it signifies the same now (Sykes 1953: 160 n. 1 ).
Zangwill in February 1919 also was in no doubt about the exclusivist
claims of Zionism: 'The Jews must possess Palestine as the Arabs are
to possess Arabia or the Poles Poland' (1937: 342). Weizmann's view
was similar: 'We, not less than Herzl, regarded it as the Jewish state in
the making' (1949: 68).
Britain's aid to the project immediately revolutionized it. It would
support the creation of a client Jewish settler state in Palestine, which
would prevent the growth of pan-Arab nationalism, serve the pur-
poses of the sponsor national state and evade the problem of Jewish
immigration at home.
21
The creation of a Jewish state in Palestine
financed by Jews and supported by interested Western bodies would be
an ideal and inexpensive resolution to the designs of a European
power.
22
21. Defending the Aliens Bill in 1905, Balfour, the then Prime Minister noted that
'it would not be to the advantage of the civilisation of this country that there should
be an immense body of persons, who, however patriotic ... remained a people apart,
and not merely held a religion differing from the vast majority of their fellow-
countrymen, but only inter-married among themselves' (quoted in Khalidi 1992: 23).
22. 'I wish to be able to say that a great event is taking place here, a great event in
the world's destiny. It is taking place without injury to anyone; it is transforming
waste places into fertile ... and the people of the country who are in a great majority,
are deriving great benefit in the general development and advancement. .. ' (Winston
Churchill, in Palestine, March 1921, PRO.C0.733/2, in Ingrams 1972: 119-20). Sir
Ronald Storrs, Britain's military governor of Jerusalem and later of Palestine, said
that Zionism 'blessed him that gave as well as him that took by forming for England
"a little loyal Jewish Ulster" in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism' (Memoirs 1937:
364, in Quigley 1990: 8).
The League of Nations and the Mandate
Immediately after the end of World War I the victors embarked upon
the division of the spoils. The San Remo Conference (April 1920)
agreed that France would be mandatory for Syria and Britain for
Palestine and Mesopotamia. Clearly, this was contrary to Article 22 of
the League Covenant, which specified that 'the wishes of these com-
munities [recognized as prospective "independent nations"] must be a
principal consideration in the selection of the mandatory'. The League
of Nations entrusted to Britain the responsibility for the establishment
of the Jewish national home, and for safeguarding the civil and reli-
gious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and
religion (The Mandate for Palestine, Article 2, 24 July 1922). The
Balfour Declaration was incorporated into the Mandate (the preamble;
see also Articles 2, 4, 6, 7, 15, 22 and 23). The League of Nations'
indifference to the indigenous population can be gauged from the fact
that the designation Arab does not occur in the Mandate. The Eleventh
Zionist Congress, held in London in July 1920, was devoted to the
development of Palestine as the Jewish national home. The purchased
land would be solely in Jewish hands, and, contrary to the claims of
the Jewish National Fund (JNF), this required the displacement of the
Arab peasants before the sale (Lehn 1988: 57).
Arab Opposition
After the serious rioting which broke out in Jerusalem in August 1929
and quickly spread, leaving some 240 Jews and Arabs dead, Britain
appointed a commission which discovered that the underlying cause of
the riots was Arab opposition to the policy of establishing a Jewish
national home at their expense. A second commission in 1930
confirmed that Jewish colonization was causing Arab eviction from
land bought from Arabs. The Passfield White Paper of the Labour
Government (October 1930) reminded all concerned that Britain's
support for Jewish immigration and the national home was conditional
upon the guarantee in the Balfour Declaration that the rights of the
indigenous community were to be safeguarded.
Between 1932 and 1937 some 144,093 Jews immigrated to
Palestine, and Jewish ownership of land more than doubled, but was
still only 5.7 per cent of the total in 1939. In all, between 1922 and
1939 the Jewish population rose from 10 per cent to 30 per cent of
Palestine (450,000) (W. Khalidi 1992: 31-33). Arab alarm led to the
establishment of the Arab Higher Committee in April 1936, which
called for a general strike to last until Zionist immigration and land
purchases were stopped and steps were taken to establish independence
for Palestine. Sporadic but increasing violence followed, to which the
British responded by sending a royal commission in November 1936.
The Peel Commission reported in July 1937, acknowledging that the
mandate was unworkable, since it involved two irreconcilables, a
Jewish homeland and the independence of the Palestinian Arabs. It
resorted to 'Solomonic wisdom' and recommended partition (Lehn
1988: 58).
The Palestinian Arabs saw the partition plan as the vivisection of
their country, proposing to give Jews, who owned only 5.7 per cent of
the land, some 40 per cent of Palestine. Moreover, the proposed
Jewish state would embrace hundreds of Arab villages and the solid
Arab bloc in Galilee. Moreover, if necessary, there would be a
forcible transfer of Arabs from the Arab lands allotted to the Jewish
state. Peel's plan rekindled the flames of Arab rebellion, and the
British responded with massive repressive measures, leading to 5000
killed and 15,000 wounded Arab casualties for the rebellion of 1936-
39 out of a population of 1 million Arabs (Khalidi 1992: 34). This
was followed by systematic disarming of the Arab population and the
breaking up of Arab political organization.
Ben-Gurion and W eizmann were jubilant, since the Peel partition
plan was the first admission that the Jewish national home was to be a
Jewish state. Moreover, it proposed some 40 per cent of Palestine at
one stroke, which was seven times greater than the land already
owned by Jews. But Jabotinsky, the leader of the Zionist opposition,
regarded it as a betrayal of the vision of Greater Israel on both sides
of the Jordan. Even though it had to be shelved, the partition plan ele-
vated the Zionist aspiration to its partial fulfilment and became a
benchmark against which to measure what could be achieved later. In
November 1937, the Jewish Agency formed a special Population
Transfer Committee. Britain, recognizing that partition would not
work, outlined its intentions in the White Paper of 17 May 1939. Its
new policy was 'the establishment within ten years of an independent
Palestine state .. .in which Arabs and Jews share in government in such
a way as to ensure that the essential interests of each community are
safeguarded'. The White Paper required restrictions on land acquisi-
tion and Jewish immigration.
Yosef Weitz, the moving spirit of the Population Transfer
Committee, and Director of the Land Department of the JNF, wrote
in his diary on 20 December 1940:
Among ourselves it must be clear that there is no room in the country for
both peoples .. .If the Arabs leave it, the country will become wide and
spacious for us ... The only solution is the Land of Israel. .. without Arabs.
There is no room here for compromises ... There is no way but to transfer
the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries, to transfer all of them,
save perhaps for [those] of Bethlehem, Nazareth, and old Jerusalem. Not
one village must be left, not one [bedouin] tribe must be left. The transfer
must be directed at Iraq, Syria and even Transjordan. For this goal funds
will be found ... And only after the transfer will the country be able to
absorb millions of our brothers and the Jewish problem will cease to
exist. There is no other solution (Weitz 1965: II, 181, quoted in Morris
1987: 27).
Realizing that British interests could conflict with Zionist ones, Ben-
Gurion began to activate American Jewry and gain more US support,
while W eizmann continued his diplomatic work in wartime London.
The death of President Roosevelt in April1945 brought Vice-President
Harry Truman to the White House, and immediately he proved to be
an ardent supporter of Zionist intentions. President Truman wrote to
Churchill on 24 April 1945, calling for the removal of restrictions on
immigration to Palestine of Jews who had been so cruelly uprooted by
ruthless Nazi persecutions (Khalidi 1992: 48). One might have
expected Truman to lead the way and receive, at America's own
expense, some of the 300,000 survivors of the Nazi barbarism who
were in various relief centres. But his tactic gave him a double
victory: he won the support of the Zionists and allayed all fears that
the US might bear the brunt of responsibility for Jewish immigration.
In October 1945, he explained to Arab diplomats to the US: 'I am
sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who
are anxious for the success of Zionism; I do not have hundreds of
thousands of Arabs among my constituents' (Khalidi 1992: 50-51).
Although Truman's letter of 24 July 1945 was addressed to
Churchill, by 26 July the British election had brought the Labour
Party to power under Prime Minister Attlee. By that time, sympathy
for Zionism was widespread in the party, which had its own solution:
'Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out, as the Jews move in' (1944
Annual General Conference Report, p. 9, in Mayhew 1975: 34, in
Adams and Mayhew 1975).
The British made the disbanding of the Zionist military establish-
ment a condition for the admission of 100,000 Jewish immigrants, as
recommended by a joint Anglo-American Committee. Truman's
endorsement ( 4 October 1946) of the Zionist UDI plan of August
killed off the proposal of the Arab delegates to a conference in
London (September 1946) that there be a unitary Palestinian state,
wherein Palestinian citizenship would be acquired through ten years
residence in the country and Jewish rights guaranteed. At the time
Truman gave his support to the Zionist plan, Palestine was divided
into 16 sub-districts, in only one of which (the Jaffa sub-district) was
there a Jewish majority. Nevertheless, the Zionist map, sponsored by
Truman on 4 October 1946 (Yom Kippur), envisaged the incorpora-
tion of 9 of the 16 sub-districts into the Jewish state, as well as the
bulk of others. The Zionists envisaged a special status for Jerusalem.
In terms of territory, the Truman-sponsored Zionist map would give
75 per cent of Palestine to the Jews, who owned less than 7 per cent of
it. While only 10 Jewish settlements (2000 inhabitants) would come
under Arab rule, about 450 Arab villages (700,000 inhabitants) would
come under Zionist rule. Moreover, the Arabs would lose their rich-
est lands and access to the sea, except for a corridor leading to Jaffa.
White House support for the Zionist plan was critical. The Attlee
government was under considerable pressure from the USA, whose
ambassador conveyed the President's request for Britain to admit
100,000 Jews into Palestine immediately. To the objections of
Christopher Mayhew, the Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, that
that would be a prescription for war,
The Ambassador replied, carefully and deliberately, that the President
wished it to be known that if we could help him over this it would enable
our friends in Washington to get our Marshall Aid appropriation through
Congress. In other words, we must do as the Zionists wished-or starve.
Bevin surrendered (Mayhew 1975: 18-19, in Adams and Mayhew 1975).
The United Nations Partition Plan, 1947
Because Britain failed to make any progress towards an agreed settle-
ment in Palestine, His Majesty's Government declared (18 February
1947) that 'The only course now open to us is to submit the problem
to the judgement of the UN.' In April 1947 the General Assembly met
in special session at Britain's request and agreed to send a commission
of inquiry, the United Nations Special Committee for Palestine
(UNSCOP). After a tour of the region the Committee recommended
partition along the lines of the Truman Yom Kippur map. Signi-
ficantly, it conceded the Negev to the Jewish state, although some
100,000 bedouin cultivated a vast area of it, while only some 475 Jews
lived in four Jewish settlements there.
In the UNSCOP recommendation, the Zionists stood to gain 57 per
cent of the land, including most of the best arable land, which was
already home to a substantial Arab population, against 43 per cent for
a Palestinian Arab state, even though by 1948 Jews had still reached
only 6.6 per cent of the total ownership of Palestine (see Gresh and
Vidal, 1988: 29; Khoury 1985: 18; Lehn 1988: 70-80). Moreover
Jews constituted only one-third of the population (some 500,000-
600,000 Jews against some 1.4 million Palestinians), having risen
from the 11 per cent (83,794 of 757, 182) in the British census of
1922. On 29 November 1947 the UN General Assembly, by a vote of
33 to 13, with 10 members abstaining, endorsed the UNSCOP parti-
tion plan (with minor modifications) and recommended the partition
of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states, with an interna-
tionalized Jerusalem.
23
The partition plan was unacceptable to the
Arabs, whose delegates at the General Assembly tested opinion as to
the UN' s competence to enforce such a plan on an unwilling Arab
population. Moreover, their draft resolution that the members of the
UN, in proportion to their resources, take in 'the distressed European
Jews' did not win sufficient support.
Following the partition resolution, and with inter-communal strife
and anti-British activity increasing to a level approaching civil war,
the British announced their intention to terminate the Mandate and
leave hastily. Britain would cede its Mandate on 15 May 1948, after
which date the UN would be free to supervise the interregnum leading
to the partition arrangements. The failure of the UN to provide for an
international force to supervise matters was an invitation to strife
between the contending parties, which, given the superiority of Zionist
23. 'The city of Jerusalem shall be established as a corpus separatum under a
special international regime and shall be administered by the United Nations ... The
City of Jerusalem shall include the present municipality of Jerusalem plus the sur-
rounding villages and towns, the most eastern of which shall be Abu Dis; the most
southern, Bethlehem; the most western, Ein Karim (including the built-up area of
Motsa); and the most northern Shu'fat' (Official Records of the Second Session of
the General Assembly, Resolutions, No. 181 (II), pp. 131-33).
resources, was bound to end in a Zionist victory. From that point on,
the Zionists would evade the problem of purchasing Arab land.
Between the Partition Plan and the End of the Mandate
The six-month period between the UN Declaration and the expiry of
the Mandate (29 November 1947-15 May 1948) would be critical for
Zionist possession of its bounty. The Yishuv (the Jewish community
in Palestine before and during 1948) was militarily and administra-
tively vastly superior to the Palestinian Arabs (Morris 1988: 7). The
Palestinian national movement lagged behind its Jewish counterpart in
cohesion, organization, motivation and performance. It was too divi-
ded, too poorly organized and too politically inexperienced for the
complexity of the challenge ahead (Mo'az 1992: 153). The Zionist mili-
tary planners drew up two new operational plans, Plan Gimmel and
Plan Dalet, the master plan for the takeover of as much Arab territory
and the expulsion of as many Palestinians as possible, whose major
architect was Yigael Yadin, the Haganah OC Operations. Plan Gimmel
aimed at buying time for the mobilization of forces to carry out the
comprehensive Plan Dalet. Places vacated by the British would have to
be occupied. Throughout most of the period, Arab resistance was such
that by mid-March 1948 the US State Department reconsidered its
position and spoke of the need for a special session of the UN General
Assembly to discuss the possibility of UN trusteeship over Palestine.
With only some weeks to go before the expiry of the Mandate, Plan
Dalet would have to be executed without delay. The strategy was one
of massive surprise attack against civilian populations softened by con-
tinuous mortar and rocket bombardment. On the psychological level,
clandestine Haganah radio stations broadcast threats of dire punish-
ment in Arabic and advised on modes of escape. These tactics were
supplemented by carefully calculated acts of histrionic cruelty which
were designed to speed up the exodus from both the towns and the
countryside. Benny Morris puts the best possible face on the pro-
gramme, suggesting that it was governed by military considerations
and goals rather than ethnic ones (1987: 62-63).
In order to relieve the pressure on Jerusalem's Jews, Ben-Gurion
and the Haganah General Staff decided on the night of 31 March-
I April that all Arab villages along the Khulda-Jerusalem axis were to
be treated as enemy assembly or jump-off points. Within the terms
of Plan Dalet villages which resisted could be destroyed and their
inhabitants expelled. Villages fell in quick succession (Al Qastal,
Qaluniya, Khulda, Saris, Biddu and Beit Suriq). Demolishing villages
without having encountered resistance marked a deviation from the
terms of Plan Dalet, but was in conformity with the Zionist dream. In
Morris's vocabulary, in the face of a life and death struggle, the
gloves of the Yishuv had to be, and were taken off (1987: 113).
A more sinister operation was enacted, with what Morris calls the
reluctant, qualified consent of the Haganah commander in Jerusalem
(1987: 113). On the night of 9 April 1948, the combined forces of
approximately 132 members of the Irgun
24
and Stem
25
organizations,
supported by Haganah mortars, began an attack on the Palestinian vil-
lage of Deir Y as sin, on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. By noon of
the following day, 254 inhabitants, including more than 100 women
and children, had been slaughtered. Their bodies were thrown into a
well, doused with kerosene and set alight.
26
There were also cases of
mutilation and rape. Morris opines that the troops did not intend com-
mitting a massacre, 'but lost their heads during the battle'. He does
concede that their intention probably was to expel the village's inhabi-
tants. In any event, the massacre at Deir Yassin promoted terror and
dread in the surrounding Arab villages, whose inhabitants abandoned
their homes immediately (Morris 1987: 115). The Zionist organiza-
tions responsible for the slaughter were headed by two future Prime
Ministers of Israel: Menachem Begin was the leader of the Irgun from
1943 to 1948, and Yitzhak Shamir was a co-commander of the Stem
organization.
The execution of Plan Dalet had devastating effect on the Palestinian
population.
27
Hundreds of men, women and children from the coastal
24. The Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) was a Jewish under-
ground armed group formed in 1931 by revisionist Zionist leaders who were
committed to the establishment of a state with a Jewish majority in the whole of
Mandated Palestine, including Transjordan.
25. Lehi (Lohamei Herut Yisrael), better known at the Stern Gang, after its
founder Avraham Stern broke away from the Irgun in June 1940. The organization
called for the compulsory evacuation of the entire Arab population of Palestine, and
advocated an exchange of Jews from Arab lands.
26. A former Stern Gang intelligence officer, a participant in the massacre wrote
of some of the brutality involved (Haaretz, 25 Aprill993). His testimony and that of
a Mossad intelligence officer on the scene is summarized by Finkelstein (1995: 189
n. 16).
27. 'The Jewish policy as exemplified by Plan D is the principal explanation for
towns of Jaffa, Haifa and Acre were drowned in their efforts to
scramble for any vessel that would take them to safety. Hundreds of
thousands were driven over the borders by the victorious Jewish
brigades. By 23 April Plan Dalet had achieved its purpose. President
Truman sent a message to Weizmann that if a Jewish state were
declared, the President would recognize it immediately. On 14 May,
the last day of the Mandate, the Chief Secretary of the British admin-
istration called a press conference in his office in the King David
Hotel in Jerusalem. To a journalist's question, 'And to whom do you
intend to give the keys of your office?' the Chief Secretary replied, 'I
shall put them under the mat' (Khalidi ed. 1992: 76). On the same
day, the Yishuv declared the establishment of the State of Israel, and
immediately Truman authorized its recognition by the USA.
The Third Phase of Zionism (The State of Israel, I 948-1967)
On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the
State of Israel. On the following day, units of the regular armies of
the surrounding Arab states went into Palestine. They amounted to
some 14,000 troops and were not likely to match the superior Zionist
forces, which prevailed in the ensuing conflict and ultimately con-
quered 78 per cent of Palestine. At the end of the war, Israel con-
trolled all of Mandatory Palestine, with the exception of the West
Bank and Gaza. There is a number of ways in which the extent of the
Palestinian catastrophe
28
can be measured.
29
Flight of Palestinian Refugees
30
in 1948
The extent of the Palestinian catastrophe is gauged also by the creation
of displaced persons, the great majority of whom fled or were expelled
from the area of the newly-created state. With few exceptions, the
the departure of most of the Arabs of Palestine' (Pappe 1992: 93).
28. Al-Nakba (The Disaster) is the title of the six-volume history of 1948 by the
Palestinian historian 'Arif al-' Arif (Beirut and Sidon: Al-Maktaba al-' Asriyya, 1956-
60).
29. Some 13,000, mostly civilian Palestinians were killed (Khalidi ed. 1992:
Appendix III, pp. 581-82), families were dispersed, surrounding countries were
damaged and so on. Hadawi estimates the financial cost (1988: 183).
30. The UN Security Council's Resolution 242 refers to the displaced Palestin-
ians as 'refugees'. The term 'refugee' is not satisfactory, since in international
major urban centres of Palestine, including substantially Arab towns,
were emptied of their Palestinian residents, with their assets falling to
the Zionists. Moreover, hundreds of Arab villages were depopulated
and destroyed. Some 156,000 Palestinian Arabs remained in their
towns and villages in the territory that became Israel. Others, some
25 per cent of the Arab population of Israel, were driven from their
villages and settled elsewhere in Israel, becoming 'internal refugees'
(or, in terms of rights to their property, 'present absentees'), and are
not included in the figures for displaced persons. The total number of
Palestinian Arab displaced persons in 1948 is conservatively estimated
at 714,150 to 744,150.3' This constituted 54 per cent of the total
Palestinian population of Mandatory Palestine. Moreover, about 6 mil-
lion dunums, some four times the total area of Palestine purchased by
the Zionist movement in the previous 70 years, were summarily divi-
ded among the old and new Jewish colonies (Khalidi ed. 1992: xxxiii).
The Physical Destruction of the Villages
That the international community has paid little attention to the wilful
destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages by the Israelis is a
tribute to the determination of the State of Israel to preserve one of its
best-guarded secrets. Until recently no publication gave either the
number or location of these villages, and the fact that they were com-
pletely destroyed helps perpetuate the claim that Palestine was virtu-
ally an empty country before the Jews entered and made the desert
bloom.
32
The failure of the Palestinians to narrate the story of their
practice, and in the UN convention on refugees, it refers to one who seeks to reside
in a foreign country because one does not want to reside in one's own country, for
fear of persecution etc. Palestinian 'refugees', on the contrary, want only to reside in
their own country, and should be referred to as 'displaced persons'. I owe this
insight to John Quigley, Professor of Law and Political Science, Ohio State University.
31. Janet Abu Lughod puts the number at around 770,000-780,000 (1987: 161).
Elia Zureik comprehensively surveys the estimates, showing that they fall within the
range, 700-800,000 (1994: table 3, p. 11 ). According to the 1994 report of the
United Nations Relief and Welfare Agency's Commissioner General, there were
504,070 'refugees' in the West Bank, 42 per cent of the population, and 643,000 in
the Gaza Strip, 75.7 per cent of the population (see Sabella 1996: 193). The
UNRWA 1995 Report estimated that there are now some 4,645,248 Palestinian dis-
placed persons in camps throughout Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and beyond.
32. As late as September 1987 a document was distributed in Switzerland appeal-
ing for 6 million Swiss francs to plant a Swiss Forest in the region of Tiberias. The
loss indicates the level of their powerlessness, but also what Edward
Said calls their 'collective incompetence', with the result that there
been no substantial Palestinian narrative of 1948 and after to challenge
the dominant Israeli one.
By the end of the 1948 war, hundreds of villages had been com-
pletely depopulated and their houses blown up or bulldozed. Only
about 100 Palestinian villages in the area conquered by Israel were
neither destroyed nor depopulated and survive to this day. However,
over 80 per cent of the lands of those who never left their homes have
been confiscated since 1948, and are at the exclusive disposal of the
Jewish citizens of the state (Khalidi ed. 1992: xxxii; see Geraisy 1994:
50-1). Khalidi' s exhaustive study give details of the destruction of each
village, supplying statistical, topographical, historical, architectural,
archaeological and economic material, as well as the circumstances of
each village's occupation and depopulation, and a description of what
remains (Khalidi ed. 1992: xviii-xix). All that remains is 'a kind of in
memoriam ... [It] is an acknowledgement of the suffering of hundreds
of thousands of men, women and children. It is a gesture of homage to
their collective memories and their sense of ancestral affiliation'
(Khalidi ed. 1992: xvii, xxxiv).
Khalidi's figure of 418 destroyed villages is the most reliable one,
and amounts to half the total number of Arab villages in Mandated
Palestine.
33
Of the 418 villages, 293 (70 per cent) were totally
destroyed and 90 (22 per cent) were largely destroyed. Seven sur-
vived, including 'Ayn Karim, but were taken by Israeli settlers. While
an observant traveller can still see some evidence for these villages, in
the main all that remains is 'a scattering of stones and rubble across a
JNF thanked its benefactors in anticipation, assuring them that their contributions
would transform a desert into a green land. Forests frequently cover over the remain-
ing traces of destroyed Palestinian villages (Aldeeb 1992: 8).
33. Benny Morris included a list of occupied towns and villages in his 1990
study. Israel Shahak also compiled lists of the destroyed villages (1975). The nearest
the Israeli Government came to providing a list of destroyed villages is in the map,
originally produced by the British Mandate and re-issued with Hebrew overprint in
1950, on which the destroyed villages are stamped with the word harus, Hebrew for
demolished. The efforts to quantify the destroyed villages range from 290 (from the
Israeli topographical maps) to 472.
forgotten landscape' (Khalidi ed. 1992: xv).
34
The profanation of
sacred places is particularly offensive.
35
The depopulation and destruction of the 418 Arab villages displaced
some 383,150 inhabitants, plus some 6994 from the surrounding vil-
lages, giving a total of 390,144 rural displaced persons. The figure is
probably an undercount (Khalidi ed. 1992: 581). The total population
of urban displaced persons is estimated at 254,016, and again is proba-
bly an undercount. Moreover, it is estimated that the 1948 war created
between 70,000 and 100,000 Bedouin displaced persons. Having sur-
veyed the extent of the catastrophe, Khalidi concludes:
Retrospective as this book is, it is not a call for the reversal of the tide of
history, nor for the delegitimization of Zionism. But it is a call...for...a
break into the chain of causation which has ... created the dimensions of
the tragedy of the Palestinian people ... It is in this spirit that this volume
has been compiled, as a reminder that in much of human endeavour,
building for one's self is often accompanied by destruction for the other
(Khalidi ed. 1992: xxxiv).
34. Khalidi's researchers visited all sites except 14, made comprehensive reports
and took photographs, recording all the detail that remains (Khalidi ed. 1992: xix).
The photographs include some village sites on which theme parks or recreation
grounds have been constructed, for example, the sites of al-Tantura, Zirin and the
cemetery of Salama (p. xxxix), as well as the remains of shrines, mosques and
churches and cemeteries (pp. xliii-xliv).
35. See Geraisy 1994: 49. An Orthodox church in 'Ayn Karim was converted
into public toilets, the mosque in Safed into an art gallery, and one in Caesarea and
'Ayn Hud into a restaurant and bar. The Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv, the Plaza Hotel in
Jerusalem and the adjacent parks, both called Independence Park, were constructed
over Muslim cemeteries (U. Davis 1987: 24). The case of the Christian village of
Biram is particularly poignant. Its inhabitants left their village in 1948, with the writ-
ten guarantee that they would be allowed back in two weeks, which did not happen.
In the closing months of 1950, the displaced elders were informed by the Israeli
Supreme Court that they could return to their village and resume occupancy in their
houses, but the commander of the army refused to comply with the judgment of the
Supreme Court (Chacour 1985: 36-38, 71). In order to ensure that the former vil-
lagers would not return, Ben-Gurion ordered the destruction of the village on
16 September 1953. Later, in 1987, followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane, under police
protection, erased the crosses and other symbols of the Christian religion which were
sculpted into the stones of the ruined houses. In September, they defiled the tomb of
the priest who had been interred in the ruined church eight months earlier (Aldeeb
1992: 9). The remains of Deir Yassin were converted into a mental hospital for
Israelis.
Many still believe that the Palestinian displaced persons of the 1948
left voluntarily, despite abundant evidence that Jewish settlement
required the expulsion of most of the indigenous population (Masalha
1992: passim). But, even if there were no evidence of expulsions and
massacres to counter the propaganda, Israel's persistence in not allow-
ing Palestinians to return to their homes is revealing.
36
Moreover, its
refusal to allow the 1967 displaced persons also to return consolidates
the judgment that Zionism in its essence required Jewish supplanting
of the indigenous Palestinian population.
The Fourth Phase of Zionism ( 1967-)
Israel's pre-emptive strike against Egypt, under the pretext of the
imminence of Arab aggression which 'threatened the very existence of
the state', initiated the war of 5-11 June 1967. In fact, Israel was
under no significant threat, let alone in mortal danger. The most likely
explanation for Israel's action was its intent to reap the fruits of vic-
tory which the war certainly would bring. On the eve of the war,
Cabinet Minister Yigal Allon, insisted that Israel must set as one of its
central aims 'the territorial fulfilment of the Land of Israel' (see
Finkelstein 1995: 132-43).
Israel's victory resulted in the capture of the West Bank (including
East Jerusalem) from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria and Gaza
and the Sinai from Egypt. Its long-term territorial intentions were sig-
nalled by its destruction of 135 Arab houses in the ancient Maghrebi
Quarter to make way for a plaza in front of the Wailing Wall, and by
the passing of a law extending the boundaries of East Jerusalem to
include villages close to Bethlehem in the south and Ramallah in the
north within days of the occupation. This was condemned by the UN
and almost all states as illegal (see Playfair 1992: 1), but was con-
firmed by Israel in 1980, when the Knesset declared 'Jerusalem in its
entirety' (i.e. West and East) to be the 'eternal capital' oflsrael.
There was virtual unanimity in the Fifth Emergency Special Session
of the General Assembly of the United Nations that there should be a
withdrawal of forces to the borders obtaining on 4 June 1967. The
36. On 16 June 1948, the 13 members of the 'Provisional Government' agreed to
bar the refugees' return. The decision was never published, and the statements of
Ben-Gurion and Sharett had to undergo successive rewritings to conform to accepted
international political norms (Morris 1995: 56).
Security Council passed Resolution 242 (22 November), emphasizing
'the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need
to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area
can live in security', and called for the 'withdrawal of Israeli armed
forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict'. All parties,
other than Israel, understood the indefinite 'from territories occupied'
(rather than 'from the territories occupied') to require Israel to with-
draw from all the territory occupied, while allowing for the possibil-
ity of minor rationalizations of the pre-5 June 1967 borders (see Neff
1991: 17, for Lord Caradon, Dean Rusk, Presidents Carter, Reagan,
and Bush).
An opportunity for a peaceful solution was lost in 1971, when both
Egypt and Jordan independently assured Gunnar Jarring, the UN spe-
cial envoy, that they would make a peace agreement with Israel, pro-
vided Israel conformed with the withdrawal required by Resolution
242. However, neither US pressure, nor the international consensus
reflected in votes in the General Assembly in 1971 and 1972 could
budge Israel to withdraw. At the Security Council, meeting in special
session in July 1973, 13 votes were cast in favour, with no abstentions,
strongly deploring Israel's continuing occupation of the territories,
and expressing serious concern at its lack of co-operation with the
Special Representative of the Secretary-General. However, the US
delegate vetoed the resolution, thereby dashing the last hope for avert-
ing a war.
On 6 October 1973 (Yom Kippur), 200 Egyptian planes targeted
Israeli airfields and army bases deep in the Sinai. At the same time the
Syrian front attacked the Golan Heights. Initially the assault petrified
the Israelis. However, the Egyptian drive toward the Sinai passes on
14 October was repulsed comprehensively. With an Israeli bridgehead
established on the west of the Suez Canal and the Egyptian army
surrounded, there was a cease-fire on 22 October and a cessation of
hostilities on 24 October. After the war, which dented Israel's self-
confidence and raised Arab morale, there was a return to the demands
of Resolution 242, with Resolution 338 (22 October 1973) calling for
the implementation of Resolution 242. The following year, at the
Rabat Summit, the Arab states designated the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) as 'the sole legitimate representative of the
Palestine people', and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat made his first
visit to the United Nations in November 1974.
The Judaization of the Occupied Territories
The systematic seizing of private and public (communal) Palestinian
property followed the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza,
and developments since suggest that the war was a further stage in the
strategy of Zionist settlement of 'biblical Israel'. All Israeli govern-
ments since 1967 have pursued a policy of the acquisition of Arab
land. During the period of the Labour-led governments of 1967-77,
East Jerusalem and one-third of the West Bank were seized and con-
trolled by the Jewish state.
Gush Emunim, the chief colonizing group founded in 1974, set
about settling all of Bretz Israel. The process of Judaization acceler-
ated with the advent of the Likud-led governments of 1977-84. The
Gush Emunim aim in a modified form (the Drobless Plan) was
adopted as government policy (Benvenisti and Khayat 1988: 64, 102).
Its intention was to ensure through a process of comprehensive Jewish
settlement that Arab control could not be re-established (see Aronson
1987; Benvenisti 1984; W. Harris 1980).
Israel in Lebanon
Ever since the reinforcements of Palestinian positions in Lebanon at
the end of the 1960s, Israel had assumed the right to police the region.
Some incursions were spectacular, such as the attack on Beirut airport
in 1968 and the invasion of southern Lebanon with 20,000 troops in
1978. UN Security Council Resolution 425 (19 March 1978) calling
upon Israel to cease immediately its military action and withdraw
forthwith from all Lebanese territory was supported by President
Carter. Israel did withdraw, but has retained a 'security zone' above
the Israeli border in some 10 per cent of the territory of Lebanon.
The Israel-Egyptian signing of the Camp David Accords, made over
the heads of the Palestinian people in September 1978, added urgency
to the settler policy.
After the 1981 bombardment of Lebanon, and, using the pretext of
the attempt on the life of Schlomo Argov, the Israeli Ambassador to
Britain (4 June 1982), Israeli jets and gunboats struck at Palestinian
positions in southern Lebanon and East Beirut. The Security Council
passed Resolution 508, demanding a cessation of Israeli hostilities.
Israel's motivation was to exterminate Palestinian nationalism and to
curb the power of the PLO (see MacBride 1983: 65; Shahak 1994: 18-
19). The figures for the dead (17 ,825) and injured (30,203) are likely
to be underestimates. Estimates of Palestinian and Lebanese displaced
persons are between 500,000 and 800,000. The International Com-
mission of Enquiry into Israel's conduct concluded that Israel violated
the laws of war in several respects (MacBride 1983: 34-35, 38, 40-42,
99, 108, etc.).
'National Unity' Coalition Government, 1984-88
During the period of the 'National Unity' Coalition (Likud and
Labour) Government (1984-88) there was an acceleration in the set-
tlement programme. By 1988, land confiscation had resulted in Jewish
control of over 52 per cent of the West Bank. In addition, over 40 per
cent of the Gaza Strip was declared to be 'state land', and hence under
exclusively Jewish control (Matar 1992: 444-48; for a complete anal-
ysis, see Halabi 1985). By early 1988, there were 117 Jewish colonies
in the West Bank, with a population of over 67,000, built on seized
land. This was in addition to the 8 large Jewish residential colonies,
with a total population of 100,000, built in fortress style in annexed
East Jerusalem. In the Gaza Strip there were 14 Jewish colonies, with
a population of 2500. Up to that time polls showed that approximately
a quarter of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip had been dispossessed of all or parts of their lands (Matar 1992:
448).
Since 1967, the water resource of the West Bank has been devel-
oped virtually exclusively for Jews, both in the Occupied Territories
and in Israel itself. By 1987, the Jewish water company, Mekorot, had
drilled more than 40 deep-bore wells and was pumping some 42
million cubic metres per year from West Bank underground water
supplies, exclusively for Jewish colonies. By contrast, Palestinians
pump only 20 million cubic metres from their pre-1967 shallow
wells. In some cases, Mekorot drilled deep-bore wells in close prox-
imity to springs used by Palestinian farmers, with the result that their
springs and wells dried up. It is estimated that pre-1967 Israel pumps
one-third of its annual needs of 1.8 billion cubic metres from under-
ground West Bank basins. Hence, Israelis exploit the water, first, to
provide water for Israel proper, and second, to provide water for
the Jewish colonies in the Occupied Territories. Meanwhile, the
Palestinians are prevented from developing their own water resources
for their own welfare and economic survival (Matar 1992: 454).
The Intifada
The Israeli occupation prompted an inevitable explosion of resistance,
bringing a new word to the international discourse. The intifada
(from a root meaning 'to shake off, to recover, to recuperate, to jump
to one's feet') denoted the Palestinian eruption to shake off the occu-
pation, beginning on 8 December 1987. The Israeli efforts to restore
the status quo shocked the international community and some Israelis.
The intifada politicized the Christian Churches, both in the Holy Land
and abroad (see Prior 1990, 1993, 1996), and gained widespread
international sympathy for the Palestinians and condemnation of the
Israeli occupation. The Palestine National Council made its declaration
of the State of Palestine (15 November 1988), which was to exist side
by side with the State of Israel. Chairman Arafat confirmed the PLO's
acceptance of Israel, its renunciation of violence and its willingness to
negotiate a peaceful settlement based on UN resolutions.
The Peace Process
The Palestinian euphoria in anticipation of the Madrid Conference in
November 1991 yielded to depression, so that by August 1993 there
was virtually no Palestinian hopeful of any improvement in the lot of
the people. While I was in Jerusalem working on this study, the Israeli
systematic and sustained bombardment of Lebanon, Operation
Accountability (25-31 July 1993), forced some 400,000 displaced per-
sons north, killed some 130, mostly civilians, and badly damaged at
least 55 towns and villages. Israel's merciless bombardment had the
effect of forging an unprecedented unity among the Lebanese people,
divided since its civil war began in 1975_37 In the end Israel had to
settle for an American-brokered, unwritten 'understanding' that
Hizbullah would cease firing Katyushas into northern Israel. During
the week Hizbullah played a major part in caring for the displaced
persons, with the result that, as the source of the only active resistance
to Israel, its standing among the Lebanese grew.
After 22 months of frustration with the lack of any progress in the
3 7. Israel's behaviour in Operation Accountability violated the principles of the
law of war, and those responsible for it, especially Premier and Minister of Defence
Yitzhak Rabin, and Chief of Staff Ehud Barak could well have been charged with
war crimes and crimes against humanity. Despite Israel's confession that its policy
was to destroy the villages of southern Lebanon and create hundreds of thousands of
refugees, newly-elected President Clinton did not condemn the operation.
Madrid Process, the Palestinian negotiators threatened to boycott the
tenth round of talks scheduled for Washington in early September
1993. Arafat, aware of the progress of the secret Oslo track, prevailed
upon them not to break off negotiations but to return for one more
round. One of the negotiators assured me that he was disillusioned by
the process but was ready at any time to leave for preparatory meet-
ings in Amman, prior to going to Washington. At the end of August
the secret contacts between the Israelis and the Palestinians in Oslo and
other European cities suggested that there was going to be an historic
compromise. Gaza and Jericho would be the first fruits, giving the
Palestinians self-rule for the interim five-year period, after the third
year of which discussions would begin on the permanent status,
including the future of Jerusalem, the settlements and the fate of the
displaced Palestinians.
The preamble to the Oslo Accord (Declaration of Principles [DOP])
stated the readiness of both parties 'to put an end to decades of con-
frontation and conflict, recognize their mutual legitimate and political
rights, and strive to live in peaceful co-existence and mutual dignity
and security and achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace set-
tlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political pro-
cess'. The 13 September 1993 White House lawn handshake between
Premier Rabin and Chairman Arafat promised a new beginning.
Prime Minister Rabin's 12 November meeting with President Clinton
yielded a cornucopia of economic, technological and military hand-
outs, with the President renewing 'America's unshakeable pledge to
maintain and enhance Israel's qualitative security edge'.
The failure to meet the Accord's deadline for Israeli withdrawal
from Gaza-Jericho on 13 December caused some to wonder whether
Israel was serious in its peace intentions. The massacre of 29 wor-
shipping Muslims in Hebron (25 February 1994) appeared to be the
last nail in the Oslo Accord's coffin. Matters were exacerbated in
early April with attacks by Hamas's /zz al-Din al-Qassam guerrillas in
Afula and Hadera. After months of protracted negotiations, 4 May
saw the signing of the 450-page agreement on Palestinian self-rule in
Gaza and Jericho. There was some rejoicing when Yasser Arafat
crossed the Rafah terminal into Gaza on 1 July.
Religious opposition to the peace process was developing. Former
Israeli Chief Rabbi Schlomo Goren called on soldiers to disobey any
orders they might receive to dismantle settlements in the Occupied
Territories. Efrat Rabbi, Shlomo Riskin, was arrested with 100 other
settlers, demanding a referendum on Oslo II (the second phase of the
Oslo process, passed by the Knesset in October 1995 with a margin of
one vote), and at an anti-Rabin rally outside the Israeli Embassy in
London on 9 August 1995, the President of Jerusalem's Great
Synagogue described Rabin as heading a 'Nazi Jewish government'.
By the Taba agreement of 24(-28) September 1995, Israel would
deploy from six towns-amounting to 4 per cent of the West Bank
area, inhabiting 250,000 Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority would
have partial control of Hebron and responsibility for 'public order' in
the 440 villages of the West Bank, inhabited by 68 per cent of the
Palestinian population and occupying 23 per cent of West Bank terri-
tory. Israel would retain control of 73 per cent of the territory of the
West Bank. Therefore, Oslo II gave the Palestinian Authority effec-
tive control over only 4 per cent of the land and limited administra-
tive responsibility for 98 per cent of the Palestinian population of the
West Bank.
The agreement, derided by Palestinian dissidents as 'catastrophic'
and a 'negotiated surrender', reflected the asymmetry of the negotiat-
ing parties, with the PLO virtually politically impotent and financially
bankrupt. It remains to be seen whether the functional autonomy
which the agreement offers will inaugurate 'a true start for a new era
in which the Palestinian people will live free and sovereign in their
own country', as Arafat promised. Although modest, the Israeli resti-
tution does amount to some dilution of the Zionist dream of a Greater
Israel. Redeployment began from Jenin on 25 October. The assas-
sination of Prime Minister Rabin by a nationalist, religious Jew on
4 November brought shock and grief to most Israelis and delight to
others, especially settlers and various religious factions, some of
whom danced in the street.
38
Shimon Peres assumed the leadership.
After the Israel army deployed from Tulkarm, Nablus, Qalqilya,
Bethlehem and Ramallah in December 1995, President Arafat visited
each town, promising that at the end of the peace 'tunnel' would stand
'the minarets, walls and churches of Jerusalem'. In Bethlehem, which
38. Former British Chief Rabbi Lord Jakobovits had written to Rabin as a gesture
of support for his part in the peace process: 'As one of the very few Orthodox rabbis
broadly supporting your peace efforts, I thought I might render some assistance in
moderating the bitter hostility of the two principal opposition groups: the settlers and
the various religious factions' (Jewish Chronicle, 18 August 1995, p. 17).
he described as the 'birthplace of the Palestinian, Jesus Christ', he was
the guest of honour at the traditional Midnight Mass. Greek Orthodox
Patriarch, Diodoros I compared Arafat to the seventh-century Caliph
Omar ibn-Khatab, who had received the 'keys of Jerusalem' after
pledging to protect the Christians of the city, a report which an editor
of al-Quds relegated to page 8, which led to his being detained for six
days by Arafat' s police.
The long-awaited Palestinian elections were duly held on 20 January
1996, without the participation of the Palestinian rejectionist parties.
Some 68 per cent of the electorate in the West Bank, including East
Jerusalem, where, due to widespread Israeli intimidation, only 40 per
cent voted, and 90 per cent in Gaza demonstrated the Palestinians'
desire to engage in the democratic process. Arafat won 88 per cent in
the presidential contest, while his Fatah party won 50 of the 88 seats
on the Council. Another 16 Fatah members, who stood in protest
against Arafat' s official list, were also elected. The euphoria of the
election yielded almost immediately to violence. Suicide bombings on
a bus in central Jerusalem (which left 24 dead, including Palestinian
passengers, 25 February) and elsewhere brought horrors which might
derail the peace process. Israel imposed draconian collective punish-
ment in the Occupied Territories, this time supported by the
Palestinian police. The 'internal closure' of both Gaza and the towns
and villages of the West Bank confirmed the fears of many that what
Oslo II prefigured was merely a Zionist corralling of natives into
what in South African were called Bantustans, and in Latin America
congregaciones or aldeias.
Violence erupted in southern Lebanon and Israel's northern border,
culminating on 11 April in Premier Peres's Operation Grapes of
Wrath. The 16 days of merciless bombing from air, land and sea
killed over 150 Lebanese civilians, created up to half a million dis-
placed persons and wreaked havoc on the infrastructure of civilian life
in southern Lebanon. The 'surgical strikes' at purely Hizbullah targets
by 'smart bombs' yielded to savage assaults on civilians, most spec-
tacularly the killing of more than 100 displaced civilians in the UN's
Fijian battalion's headquarters at Qana (18 April), which seemed to go
beyond what could be tolerated even by a generally forgiving, pro-
Israeli West.
39
Israel's offensive against mainly civilian targets
39. Ironically, I was informed of this development at the reception for a London
violated the 1949 Geneva Convention, for which the perpetrators
might be brought before tribunals for war crimes and crimes against
humanity.
40
Rabbi Yehuda Amital, a member of Peres's cabinet,
called the Qana killings a desecration of God's name (chilul hashem)
(Jewish Chronicle, 3 May 1996, p. 1). However, the Nobel Peace
Prize winner's murderous ruthlessness towards Lebanese civilians
proved to be a monumental political miscalculation.
Grapes of Wrath welded the different factions of Lebanese society
into an uncharacteristic unity of purpose against Israel, and precipi-
tated the day when Israel will have to conform to UN Resolution 425
and withdraw from southern Lebanon. The uncritical support which
Israel received from President Clinton and Secretary of State
Christopher betrayed that administration's disregard for international
law and civilized behaviour when its own foreign policy interests
were at stake, and when a presidential election was on the horizon.
The Lebanon incursion did not advance Premier Peres's case, and he
was beaten narrowly by Binyamin Netanyahu in the 29 May elections.
However, President Clinton was elected for a second term.
In the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, which are
scheduled to deal with the substantive issues leading to a comprehen-
sive peace settlement, the demands of justice and conformity with the
requirements of international law and the conventions on human
rights will have to yield to the reality of the political imbalance of
power. The partners in the negotiations enjoy an asymmetric bargain-
ing relationship. Israel is unlikely to conform to UN Resolutions and
to respect the rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in a range
of human rights conventions. The foundational injustice done to the
indigenous Palestinian people by the Zionist venture will not be
righted, at least at this stage. A just solution to the problem would
require a rolling back of the achievement of Zionism and the aban-
donment of its ideology, including that the Palestinian displaced
persons be allowed return to their former homes, or be adequately
Conference marking the centenary of Herzl' s Der Judenstaat.
40. During the period oflsrael's incursion (15 April), Szymon Serafinowicz, an
85-year-old refugee was committed for Britain's first war crimes trial, charged with
murdering 3 Jews during the winter of 1941-42. Sixteen witnesses came from as far
afield as Israel, Siberia, Belarus, Cape Town and USA. The Chief Executive of the
Board of Deputies of British Jews applauded the action in recognition of the funda-
mental principle that justice must be done, however much time may have elapsed.
compensated in accordance with international law. It is not likely that
the State of Israel will acknowledge the injustice Zionism has perpe-
trated on the Palestinians, beg their forgiveness and make commensu-
rate reparation. There can, of course, be a pragmatic solution based
on compromise by the parties concerned. But justice will have to wait
another day.
The Religious Dimension
The murder of 29 Muslim worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in
Hebron by a Jewish religious settler (25 February 1994),
41
and the
assassination of Premier Rabin (4 November 1995) by a religious Jew,
who protested that he was acting in God's name, focus on the religious
dimension to Zionism. Yigal Amir, the son of an orthodox rabbi, was
a student in the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies in Bar-Ilan
University, founded by the National Religious Party (NRP). Among
the books found in his room was one lauding Goldstein (Jewish
Chronicle, 10 November 1995, p. 3). Prior to Rabin's assassination,
Likud leader Binjamin Netanyahu had sat on platforms at opposition
rallies at which Rabin was lampooned as a Hitler and demonstrators
cried out Rabin boged (Rabin is a traitor). A number of rabbis, for
example, Moshe Tendler of Monsey, New York, and Abraham Hecht
of Brooklyn, stressed that not an inch of occupied land could be sur-
rendered (sic!), and Hecht added that any Jewish leader who would
give back land should be killed (Hertzberg 1996: 37). We shall see
that such views derive from a particular interpretation of the land
traditions of the Bible.
The promise of land to Abraham and his descendants, while a singu-
lar eruption into human history in the biblical narrative, is appropri-
ated by every generation of Jews and is spelled out daily in the Siddur.
However, in the diaspora, 'Zion' gradually became increasingly meta-
physical, and 'portable': 'The Rabbis, undaunted even by the fall of
41. The burial-place of Baruch Goldstein, 'the upright, martyr', has the appear-
ance of a garden of remembrance in Kahane Park in Kiryat Arba, and is fully
equipped for prayer services for pilgrims to the shrine, with a bookcase and a suit-
able apparatus for burning memorial candles. Supporters kiss his tomb, and pray
over his grave. Rabbi Dov Lior addressed Goldstein's son on the occasion of his bar
mitzvah: 'Ya' akov Yair, follow in your father's footsteps. He was righteous and a
great hero' (Jerusalem Report, 12 December 1996, p. 10).
their state, had discovered that Palestine was portable. And so, by a
network of institutions, they contrived that Palestine should live in
Israel, if not Israel in Palestine' (Zangwill 1937: 3-4).
In kabbalistic literature the land of Israel, the Torah and God are
one. The spiritual unity of the people and the land made it natural to
accept the people's physical separation from it until the end of time
(see Schweid 1987: 539).
In the modern period, those Jews who opted for emancipation and
regarded the place of their citizenship as their fatherland considered
Zion to be the symbol of universal redemption, and rejected the re-
establishment of Jewish sovereignty. The Orthodox minority, how-
ever, rejected emancipation but retained the view of the temporal
nature of exile until the coming of the Messiah. The Zionists, for their
part, aspired to equality and emancipation for Jews, but insisted that it
would be achieved only within the framework of an independent
Jewish state in Uganda, northern Sinai, Argentina, Biro Bidzhan
(Laquer 1972: 157-58, 427-28) or, preferably, in Zion.
While there is no appeal in Der Judenstaat to the injunction to carry
out the mitzvot in the Promised Land, the symbiotic relationship
between the secular and the religious motivation is reflected in the
Hebrew name for the Jewish National Fund (JNF). In the daily
Morning Service of the Siddur, after preliminary prayers, the reading
from Exodus 13.1-10 enlivens the memory of the deliverance from
Egypt. The reading invites all readers and hearers to consider them-
selves to be on the journey from slavery to freedom (with you itali-
cized here to indicate the stress on the contemporary reader):
Today, in the month of Abib, you are going out. When Yahweh brings
you into the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Hivites,
and the Jebusites, which he swore to your ancestors to give you ... For
with a strong hand Yahweh brought you out of Egypt (Exod. 13.4-9).
The reading continues:
When Yahweh has brought you into the land of the Canaanites, as he
swore to you and your ancestors, and has given it to you, you shall set
apart to Yahweh all that first opens the womb ... 'By strength of hand
Yahweh brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery ... Therefore I
sacrifice to Yahweh every male that first opens the womb' .. .It shall serve
as a sign on your hand and as an emblem on your forehead that by
strength of hand Yahweh brought us out of Egypt (Exod. 13.11-16).
The Blessings for the study of the Torah follow, and the Priestly
Blessings (Num. 6.24-26). Then, in the second text from the
Babylonian Talmud (Sab. 127a), we read,
These are the precepts whose fruits a person enjoys in This World but
whose principal [fruit] remains intact for him [ha-keren kayemet W] in the
World to Come. They are the honour due to father and mother, acts of
kindness, early attendance at the house of study morning and evening,
hospitality to guests, visiting the sick, providing for a bride, escorting the
dead, absorption in prayer, bringing peace between man and his fellow--
and the study of Torah is equivalent to them all.
The Hebrew name for the JNF, Keren Kayemet L'Yisrael, evoked the
foundational legend of deliverance from Egypt and entrance into the
Promised Land, already occupied by others. It appealed to the sacri-
ficial spirit of Jews to make a generous offering as a gesture of
thanksgiving, corresponding to the offering of 'the firstborn of your
livestock'. While the liturgical offering was to Yahweh, the contem-
porary one would be to the JNF, as an act of sacrifice on a par with
those other commandments, which, in addition to meriting returns in
this life (through gathering interest), would be rewarded in the World
to Come.
In the early stages, Palestine was considered to be a free land, but
difficulties surfaced in the first wave of immigration when it was real-
ized that there was no free land and a population in excess of half a
million already in the mid-nineteenth century (J. Abu-Lughod 1987:
140). Even though the implementation of the Ottoman Land Code of
1858, whereby all land was to be registered in the name of individual
owners, led to the manipulation of the process by absentee landlords,
the fellahin working the land had a developed sense of ownership, and
in some cases realized the precariousness of their plight only when
'their land' was sold over their heads to Jews (see Khalidi 1988: 211-
24). Moreover, the land was expensive, and more so with immigra-
tion. Even the arid land was in somebody's possession (e.g. the Sultan,
or later the British Crown). Zangwill saw at once the problem and a
Bible-based solution:
There is, however, a difficulty from which the Zionist dares not avert his
eyes, though he rarely likes to face it. Palestine proper has already its
inhabitants ... So we must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the
tribes in possession as our forefathers did, or to grapple with the problem
of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for
centuries to despise us (in Aprill905, 1937: 201).
Since Jewish immigration coincided with the beginnings of political
awareness among the Arabs there was bound to be a conflict of interests.
There was little debate within political Zionism on the right of Jews
to go to an already inhabited Palestine. Whereas one might expect to
find debates centring around such concepts as natural right, historical
right, moral right, or religious right, the discourse was content to
stake a claim by virtue of a perceived 'national' need, with a pre-
sumption that a need constituted a right.
Then there were some pressing questions of quality. Would the state
be the home of a secular people, or a holy land in which the mitzvot
would be carried out? Was it legitimate to anticipate the divine initia-
tive and use secular tools to establish a national homeland? Within
Jewish eschatology there has always been a certain tension between the
aspiration to redemption through a divine initiative and that facilitated
by human intervention. There was a danger that auto-redemption,
being primarily a secular, political aspiration, would lead to total
estrangement from the religious tradition. The secular-sacred tension
is the subject of intense debate in Israel to this day.
Biblical Literalism and Political Hermeneutics
The role in the Zionist enterprise played by Jewish theology and
appeal to the Bible is difficult to assess precisely. Political Zionism
was not only not supported by the religious establishment in the
beginning but was bitterly opposed. As we shall see, rather late in the
day, Orthodox theology performed a volte face and made common
cause with secular, political Zionism. In this new context, appeal to
the traditions of the Bible and their interpretation in the Mishnah and
Talmud and elsewhere within Jewish theology provided secular
Zionism with a theological foundation which was able to root settle-
ment in the land with traditions much older than those of European
nationalism and colonialism.
The key figure in this fundamental re-interpretation of classical
Orthodoxy was Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook (HaRav, or, simply
Rav, 1865-1935), who was to become the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi
of Palestine. His task was formidable, since, with the exception of the
earlier Rabbis Alkalai and Kalischer, and some later voices within the
religious wing of the Hovevei Zion movement, for example, Shmuel
Mohiliver, Yitzhak Reines and Yehiel Michal Pines (Avineri 1981:
187), virtually the whole of Orthodox and Reform Jewry was opposed
to Zionism. In particular the pietists who made up the old Jewish set-
tlement in Palestine were bitterly opposed to the secularists who sys-
tematically violated the Torah while embarking on their secular
redemption of the Jewish people. For the newcomer Zionists, the
pietists were decadent parasites who were blind to the vision of Jewish
redemption. Rav Kook's tolerance of the secularists who mocked at
traditional sanctities brought abuse from many noted rabbis (Ben Zion
Bokser, in Kook 1979: 10). Putting the new wine of the activist secu-
lar political movement of Zionism into the old bottles of Orthodox
Judaism would be a precarious activity.
Rav Kook's writings and teachings provided the first systematic
attempt to integrate the traditional, passive religious longing for the
land with the modern, secular and aggressively active praxis of
Zionism, giving birth to a comprehensive religious-nationalist
Zionism.
42
Rav Kook displayed an exceptional ability to integrate the
many traditions of Judaism into a whole. He called for a renewal of
the old and a hallowing of the new. In line with his seeking 'the holy
sparks' in every Jewish ideology, he saw secular Zionism as an instru-
ment of God to further the messianic redemption and restoration
(tikun) not only of Jews but of all humanity (tikun a/am-humankind
was one body and one soul), a critical aspect of the Rav's teleology,
widely ignored by his disciples: 'It is impossible not to be filled with
love for every creature, for the flow of the light of God shines in
everything, and everything discloses the pleasantness of Yahweh. "The
mercy of Yahweh fills the earth" (Ps. 33.5)' ('The Moral Principles:
Love', Kook 1979: 135, par. 3). All human history was evolving
inexorably towards the divine perfection of the Kingdom of the
Almighty: even the secular had sparks of the sacred. Such was the
immediacy of God that everything was a crust with an inner essence, a
divine dimension.
However, his religious perspective was not received enthusiastically
when he set foot in Palestine in 1904. In the mind of the Zionist pio-
neers, the time of ghettoized Orthodox religion had passed, while in
the mind of the Orthodox establishment, secular Zionism was so riv-
eted to the soil that its eyes missed the skies: 'They refuse to mention
God. Their focus on power and glory obscures the all-pervasive
42. See Kook 1979: 390-92 for a note on his writings, many of which were pub-
lished only after his death in 1935.
sacred and Divine' (in Yaron 1991: 216). For Rav Kook, however,
the divine plan depended on the totality of the Jewish people and not
on the Orthodox alone. In his day, the divine energy was at its
strongest in the creative pioneers of the secular Zionist revolution. If
their utopian secularism was heretical in the minds of the Orthodox
establishment, for Kook it represented the source of renewal.
Rav Kook's Judaism was a synthesis of Orthodoxy, nationalist
Zionism and the liberalism of the Enlightenment, although his advo-
cacy of the values of the Enlightenment has not impressed itself on his
followers. Orthodoxy had run dry, and nationalism alone would not
satisfy the longings of the Jewish heart for long, since, like all
parochialisms, it settles for a segment rather than the whole of life.
Zionism was not a novel principle but was a means of realizing the
ancient ideal of settlement in the land for the purpose of fulfilling the
mitzvot, thus foreshortening the wait for divine redemption. Return to
Zion was an immediate imperative for every Jew, and not a mere
messianic postulate to be carried out in God's good time. It was the
real, terrestrial Jerusalem and not just the celestial Jerusalem of
prophetic visions that interested the Rav.
For Rav Kook the link between People and Land was of divine
provenance: 'Our indelible inner nature, heart and soul, remain firmly
committed to the Holy Land .. . Eretz Israel constitutes the indispens-
able basis for the fulfilment of the Jewish People's Divine vocation.'
No genuine Jewish life could prosper outside Eretz Israel. Israel's
divine genius will shine forth and illuminate the world once the entire
nation is physically and spiritually reunited with the land. Israel's re-
establishment in its homeland is a precondition of the corporate Jewish
sanctity's consummation. The JNF's land acquisition from Gentiles
implemented the divinely ordained 'Conquest of Eretz Israel' (in
Yaron 1991: 208-12).
In conformity with his unique kabbalistic messianic view-more is
hidden from the eye than is seen-Rav Kook claimed that God was
bringing about his redemption through the 'Divinely inspired' Balfour
Declaration that 'mirrored the Dawn of Salvation' (Yaron 1991:
226),
43
and the entire Zionist enterprise, even through people who
43. He wrote to Lord Rothschild after the Balfour Declaration, and at a London
rally after the Declaration, he stated: 'I have not come to thank the British but to con-
gratulate them for being privileged to be the source of this Declaration to the People
of Israel' (Yaron 1991:318 n. 12).
never suspected the deeper significance of their role. Practical activi-
ties were inseparable from spiritual aspirations, and social activity as
well as mysticism had religious meaning: stirrings 'down below' were
a necessary preamble to evoking messianic grace 'from above'
(Hertzberg 1996: 39). Whereas religious Zionists, such as Ahad
Ha'am, stressed the spiritual dimension of the return, and secular
Zionists, such as Herzl, the political, Rav Kook sought a synthesis,
holding that the political and metaphysical dimensions would be united
in a state. Even self-professed atheists and proponents of a wholly
secular Zionism reflect the divine, once imbued with the spirit of
Israel (Yaron 1991: 203). Even if the secular Zionists were motivated
by European nationalism and socialism, at the objective cosmic level
the real meaning of their activity was suffused with the divine will,
which their seemingly atheistic motivation clouded over. Even though
they might deny the ultimate coming of the Messiah, their activities
speed up his arrival. Without knowing it, they were instruments in the
divine plan. Religious Jewry should penetrate beyond the shell of
secular atheistic nationalism into the divine spark at the core of
Zionism. The spirit of God and the spirit of Israel (Jewish national-
ism) were identical.
Such a fusion of secularism and Orthodoxy evoked strong opposi-
tion, especially from those who could not concede that Zionist
nationalism was an adequate expression of the Jewish nation's sense of
being impregnated with the divine. Initially, some rabbis in Palestine
ceremonially excommunicated the Zionist pioneers, especially those of
the second aliyah, who were impregnated with the spirit of Russian
socialist revolution. If it appeared to others that Zionism had aban-
doned its Jewish religious roots in seeking normality rather than the
singularity and distinctiveness befitting a people saturated with the
divine Shekhinah, Rav Kook's vision was able to penetrate through the
secular clouds that overshadowed and the multiple veils that obscured
the core religious values of the Jewish tradition.
As Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem and Palestine for 16 years until his
death in 1935, Rav Kook had abundant opportunities to infuse his
unique form of political mysticism into the discourse of Zionism. As
we shall see, his prodigious writings, and perhaps especially his found-
ing of Merkaz HaRav,
44
have proven to be critical in the renaissance
44. He founded Merkaz HaRav (the Rabbi's Centre) in 1921, as a Jerusalem
of religio-political Zionism up to the present. The excerpts of his
writings available popularly do not deal with the reality that the
renewal of the People of Israel would take place in a land wherein the
Jews were a minority and in which there was already a well-estab-
lished indigenous population. In the light of developments which took
place 13 years after his death, one speculates whether Rav Kook's con-
fidence in the divine will operating within secular Zionism, with
history moving inexorably towards the Kingdom of the Heavens,
would have been disturbed by the outrages attendant upon the partial
realization of the secularist Zionist dream in 1948-49, and of the
iniquities which have been perpetrated by his disciples up to the pre-
sent, which, while emanating from religious fervour, shock decent
people by their brutality. Perhaps, like Herzl, his death before the first
beginnings of the messianic era in 1948 saved his reputation as a
mystic, a philosopher and a saint from being terminally tainted.
The State of Israel
Israel's proclamation as a 'Jewish state' ensured that there would be
close ties between religion and political life, and that ideologies based
on religious principles would permeate the much wider political
discourse. Appeal to the foundational significance of Torah has
enjoyed widespread support, even from atheistic Jews.
45
However,
religious values are not confined to the Israeli religious parties (which
won 23 of the 120 seats in the Knesset in 1996), and on some funda-
mental questions, such as territoriality, agreement transcends party
Higher Yeshiva catering for the entire Jewish people, and providing a six-year pro-
gramme, involving the study of the Halakhah, Biblical Studies, Jewish History,
Eretz Israel Studies, Jewish Philosophy and Science, and Literary Style (Yaron
1991: 177-79).
45. Ben-Gurion regularly convened the 'Prime Minster's Bible Study Circle',
which included Zalman Shazar, the then President of Israel. His lecture, 'The Bible
and the Jewish People', delivered at Nahalal, 20 July 1964, makes abundant use of
biblical texts, especially those dealing with the promise of restoration. While he
alludes to the Hebrew prophets and their concern for justice, he does not deal with
the injunctions to disinherit the Canaanites, the Joshua legend, nor with the traditions
that reflect racist, ethnicist, xenophobic and militaristic tendencies. His sole, oblique
reference to the indigenous Palestinians is that while the whole world regarded Israel
with respect and admiration, 'Our Arab neighbours have as yet not made peace with
our existence, and their leaders are declaring their desire to destroy us' ( 1972: 294 ).
See also Moshe Dayan's Living with the Bible (1978).
boundaries, reflecting in some alignments the Kookist doctrine of the
unity of the secular and sacred. Moreover, the extent to which the
ideology of non-parliamentary groups can infiltrate the political dis-
course is one of the most distinctive features of the Israeli body
politic.
Moreover, the Israeli electoral system guarantees minority ideolo-
gies a greater influence than their numerical support would enjoy in
other democracies. With no electoral constituencies in Israel, any
party or electoral list winning as little as 1.5 per cent (raised from
1 per cent) of the national vote gains representation in the Knesset in
proportion to its percentage vote. This has led to a proliferation of
parties, most of which obtain only a few, but critical seats in the 120
member Knesset. In the May 1996 election there were 20 lists, of
which 11 won seats, with 5 winning no more than 5 seats. Moreover,
since no political party has ever won an overall majority, all Israeli
Prime Ministers have had to construct coalitions, all of which have
involved religious parties. Some 90 per cent of the supporters of the
religious parties voted for Binyamin Netanyahu, who was elected
Prime Minister with the narrowest of margins. He was able to form
of a coalition involving 19 MKs of the Sephardic Orthodox Shas and
the National Religious parties, with the support of 4 United Torah
Judaism MKs. In the newly-formed coalition government, Shas and
the NRP members took control of the ministries of education and
culture, labour and interior, and increased their numbers on several
Knesset committees.
46
Religious parties, however, sacrifice some of
46. The 1996 election yielded 34 seats to Labour, 32 to the Likud/Gesher/
Tzomet list (with 5 seats surrendered to Gesher and 4 to Tzomet), 10 to Shas, 9 to
the NRP, 9 to Meretz, 7 to Israel ba-Aliya, 5 to DFPE, 4 each to United Torah
Judaism, Third Way, United Arab List and 2 to Moledet. The nine other parties/lists
which contested the election won 3 per cent of the national vote between them but no
seats. In order to obtain a working parliamentary majority, Netanyahu formed a gov-
ernment with Shas and the NRP, and with Israel ba-Aiiya (newly-formed immi-
grants' party), the Third Way (a breakaway faction from Labour). as well as with the
Gesher and the militantly nationalist Tzomet factions of his own list. giving a total of
62 seats, and the additional 4 supporting votes of United Torah Judaism. The three
religious parties increased their combined Knesset representation from 16 to 23.
Labour, Meretz (a left of centre alignment of Mapam, Shinui and Ratz, a civil rights
movement), DFPE (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, an alliance of the
Communist Party, Rakkah and other leftist, Israeli-Arab groups), and the United
Arab List formed the main body of opposition. Israeli-Arab representation reached a
their ideology in a compromise with more secular ideologies and
pragmatic considerations. In the survey which follows, I review some
of the ways in which Torah values penetrate Israeli society.
Far Right Zionism
The Far Right, or Radical Right in Israel refers to those groups which
aspire to a Greater Israel, with borders extending well beyond the
Green Line of the 1949 Armistice. For some that means annexing the
Occupied Territories only, while others have their eyes fixed on the
east bank of the Jordan also. Together with secular ultra-nationalist
ideologies, religion and the Torah feature prominently in this ideol-
ogy, which in most forms betrays a strongly xenophobic element, and
in many cases advocates violence and fascist activities as a means to its
politico-religious goal. The movements and parties whose principal
objective is the creation of Greater Israel include Gush Emunim,
Tehiya-Tzomet, Morasha, Moledet and the now illegal Kach.
47
Kach
has been the most extreme in its advocacy of an overt, Torah-driven
xenophobic policy, and Gush Emunim has proved to be by far the
most influential group. One of the features of modem Israeli politics
is the ascendancy of the nationalist-religious right wing since the
1980s, with the result that what were extreme nationalistic, ethno-
centric, xenophobic and militaristic positions earlier have become
respectable.
If the outline of a Jewish renaissance was laid down in the writings
of the elder Rav Kook, it was left to his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook,
and his disciples in the Merkaz HaRav to carry it forward. While the
elder Rav Kook's view that the messianic era had begun was not taken
seriously in his own day, his son supported it later with a programme
of messianic-political activism. Reflecting claims of pre-eminence
(segulah) and group superiority, the younger Kook emphasized the
unique and holy nature of the Jewish people, and of every Jew, even
non- and indeed anti-religious Zionists, and saw in the rebirth of the
Jewish state the first step towards the coming of the Messiah. All the
institutions of the state were means to a messianic end: the government
and the army were Kadosh (in Kook 1991: 353).
new high of 11 (4 DFPE, whose fifth MK is Jewish, 4 UAL, 2 Labour and
I Meretz) (see Peretz and Doron 1996).
4 7. See further Lustick 1988 and Sprinzak 1991. Parties rise and disappear
quickly in the turbulent world of Israeli right-wing politics.
On the eve of Independence Day (2 May) 1967, the younger Kook
addressed a gathering of alumni of Merkaz HaRav. Rising to a
crescendo, he bewailed the partition of historic Bretz Israel. The 1947
UN Partition Plan had cut Bretz Israel, 'the inheritance of our fore-
fathers' into pieces, placing 'portions of our country in foreign
hands', leaving him in 194 7 desolate in his father's old room in
Jerusalem's Jaffa Street, while Jews were dancing in the streets out-
side. Now in 1967, recalling that sad day, and reflecting on, 'They
have divided my land' (Joel 3.2), and bewailing, he exclaimed,
Where is our Hebron? Do we forget this? And where is our Shechem? Do
we forget this? And where is our Jericho? Do we forget this too? And
where is our other side of the Jordan? Where is each block of earth? Each
part and parcel, and four cubits of Hashem's land. Is it in our hands to
relinquish any millimetre of this?
and answered, 'G-d forbid' (Kook 1991: 338-39).
When, three weeks later, Jerusalem, Hebron, Shechem and Jericho
'miraculously fell into our hands' and Israel was in control of an
enlarged state, with the Occupied Territories three times the size of
Israel, his disciples were sure that a genuine spirit of prophecy had
come over their rabbi on that day (Sprinzak 1985: 37-38). The war
strengthened the sense of national solidarity among Jews in Israel and
abroad, signalling the revival of 'territorial maximalism' (Sprinzak
1991: 35-69) and, for those religiously inclined, a religious-national
awakening. The occupation of East Jerusalem and all the Holy Places
within her walls was proof that there was a process of divine redemp-
tion, founded on the trinity of the Land of Israel, the People of Israel,
and the Torah of Israel. The religious camp was ready to fill the
vacuum of a Zionist idealism which had become a spent force. The
days of the Messiah were at hand and his arrival could be speeded up
by political action, including force when necessary. As one was to
learn gradually, such views were not the preserve of the flamboyant
Rabbi Meir Kahane, but were shared by some of the most important
Orthodox figures of the twentieth century (Hertzberg 1996: 37).
For the late Rabbi Meir Kahane and his followers in Kach (Thus it
is, the political party he founded in 1972) and Kahane Chai (Kahane
lives), religion and the Torah, rather than democracy, were the basis
of the state. Zionism and Western democracy were irreconcilable. The
Torah alone distinguishes Jews from non-Jews: secular Judaism is just
atheism wrapped in a prayer shawl. The Torah legitimizes the Jewish
state, since God delivered the Jews from slavery in Egypt and gave
them the Promised Land, and commanded Jews to live in Bretz Israel.
The Torah provides the only reason to live in a country which is mis-
erable and uninteresting, and an absolute disaster from a geographical
as well as a material viewpoint (Kahane, in Mergui and Simonnot
1987: 38-40). Jews should leave the diaspora and settle in the land, at
God's command. The Bible establishes the borders: ' ... minimally,
from El Arish, northern Sinai, including Yamit, part of the east bank
of the Jordan, part of Lebanon and certain parts of Syria, and part of
Iraq, to the Tigris river' (Mergui and Simonnot 1987: 54-55).
It is God's desire that Jews live separately and have the least possi-
ble contact with what is foreign in order to create a pure Jewish cul-
ture based on the Torah. In line with 'Kookism', Kahane held that
Zionism accelerated the coming of the Messiah, and that the creation
of the State of Israel marked the beginning of the messianic era. These
factors override any consideration for the indigenes. To avoid future
problems, Arabs should be deported with as little force as necessary.
They have no right to be in Jerusalem, and Kahane would applaud
anyone who blew up the two mosques on Temple Mount (Mergui and
Simonnot 1987: 43-48, 85-86). Kahane claimed that all the rabbis
supported the expulsion of the Arabs just as clearly, but in private.
Having failed in 1977 and 1981, he was elected to the Knesset in
July 1984 with 1.3 per cent of the national vote. Throughout the
1970s until his assassination on 5 November 1990, he was the most
aggressive of the zealots for the implementation of the biblical
paradigm for Jewish settlement of the land (see Friedman 1990; 1992;
Sprinzak 1991). While Kahane's ideology was offensive to people who
respect democracy, there was a clear consistency between his pro-
gramme and the values of the Torah, interpreted in a literalist fashion.
He cannot be faulted for seeking the implementation of the divine
mandate of the Torah, which not only sanctions the expulsion of the
indigenous population, but requires it as a commandment. Moreover,
his association of the State of Israel with the events of the messianic
eschaton resonated sympathetically with the increasingly popular
teleology of the religious-ultra-nationalist camp.
Kahane's brazenly violent methods and offensive language con-
founded the political establishment, leading to the banning of his party
from the elections in 1988 and the locating of Kach on what was then
the 'lunatic' fringe of Israeli society. But there were more subtle and
less embarrassing ways of arriving at a similar goal. The June War
of 1967 provided the catalyst for a rejuvenated religious Zionism
and brought to public prominence a whole culture of eschatological
Zionism which up to then had been largely confined to a number of
yeshivot. It led to the founding of Hatenua Lemaan Eretz Yisrael
Hashlema (Movement for the Whole of Eretz Yisrael, or Land of
Israel Movement) in September 1967, which proclaimed that the con-
quest of Arab territory was irreversible and that Israel could embark
on the absorption of more immigrants and settlement (see Sprinzak
1991: 38-43).
Furthermore, the Yom Kippur War of 1973 (the mechdal, culpable
blunder), interpreted by Rabbi Yehuda Amital as a reaffirmation of
the messianic process of redemption, emphasized the need for decisive
action to consolidate and enlarge the Jewish presence in the land of
Israel. It was this urgency which led to the founding of Gush Emunim
(Bloc of the Faithful) by former students of Merkaz HaRav. It was
officially established in February 1974 as an extra-parliamentary
movement, in preference to remaining as a pressure group within the
NRP (Sprinzak 1991: 64-66). From the beginning, it has been a pro-
fessional, influential and well-funded organization which has consis-
tently refused to transform itself into a political party, or to support
any one party. Its membership has come from the extreme Right, the
Right, and even the Left.
The movement was guided by the teachings of the elder Kook and
those of his son, Rabbi Zvi Y ehuda Kook, the major spiritual leader
of the Gush until his death in 1982. For the younger Kook and his
disciples, the war of 1967 was a turning point in the tortuous process
of messianic redemption. Since the dimensions of Erez Israel were
those of Genesis 15, rather than of pre-1967 Israel, Jews were obliged
to fulfil the 'commandment of conquest' by settling in the whole land
and defending Jewish sovereignty over it. Only then would they be at
home and in place for redemption. Hence, one could never abandon
Judea and Samaria.
Concerning the Arab inhabitants of the region, the example of
Joshua's divine mission was eternally true. The Arabs could stay, pro-
vided they accepted minority status and gave no trouble. After the
Arabs have learned that the land is Jewish, friendly relations may
obtain. Moreover, for Zvi Yehuda Kook, the Jews never expelled the
Arabs in 1948-49: they ran away on their own, 'whether from
cowardice or exaggerated fear'. Jewish claims to the land rest on
parental inheritance, as witnessed in the Bible and history (1991: 196-
98). Moreover, since the Holocaust symbolized the extent of the evil
of the Gentiles and their deep hatred of Jews, it was all the more
necessary for Jews to set up a state away from the Gentiles,
reinforcing some of the more xenophobic and ethnocentric traditions
of the biblical narrative (e.g. Ezra 6.21; 9.1; 10.11; Neh. 9.2; 10.28;
13.3).
While the Gush focused on settlement of Jews in the Occupied
Territories, it saw itself as a more general renewal movement within
Zionism. After the establishment of the state Zionism had settled for
the creation of a materialistic society in which the individual's plea-
sure replaced the national goal and mission. The Gush determined to
put into effect the process of national redemption as mandated by the
Torah and highlighted by 'Kookism'. The settlement of Judea and
Samaria was a critical element in the process of messianic redemption,
in which every Jew was obliged to play a part. This contrasted sharply
with the traditional concept of Jewish Messianism, which favoured a
more passive and a-political attitude of awaiting patiently the miracu-
lous coming of the Messiah. Moreover, the Gush injected a strong
political, and violent element into religious Zionism.
From the beginning, the Gush was led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger. A
product of the Merkaz HaRav, Levinger too sees the struggle for
Jewish settlement as paving the way for the advent of the Messiah. The
fulfilment of Greater Israel was as sacred a duty as respect for the
Sabbath. The practical decisions to settle Judea and Samaria were a
natural extension of the ideological foundation laid down in the teach-
ings of Rav Kook. The dozens of Torah communities which began to
appear on the hills of Judea and Samaria grew out of his insistence
that the settlement of Hebron and Shechem, like that of Tel Aviv and
Jerusalem, was a straightforward commandant of the Torah. The first
settlements after the 1967 War (Kfar Etzion, Kiryat Arba and
Hebron) were founded by young rabbis from the Merkaz HaRav.
Settlement was a natural complement to Torah, just as Joshua's con-
quest was a continuation of what Moses taught in the wilderness. Each
new settlement was a witness to God's choice of the People of Israel,
to the truth of Torah, and to the word of Hashem and his prophets
(see Ezek. 36.34-36; in Zvi Yehuda Kook 1991: 351-52). To this day,
Levinger and his followers pursue their goal with distinctively knitted
skullcaps, prayer books and machine-guns. Their appearance on TV
with guns ablaze in Hebron witnessed to a kind of Torah-observance
which conforms with the Joshua narrative. Levinger himself was
jailed for ten weeks for the 'criminally negligent homicide' of a
Hebron Palestinian in September 1988.
The policy of the Gush is to expand the settlements and settle a mil-
lion Jews in the West Bank before the turn of the millennium, so that
territorial compromise becomes impossible and eventual annexation of
the territories becomes the obvious conclusion. Having failed to get
much support initially for aliyah from abroad, the Gush turned to
encouraging Jews living in the state of Israel to settle in the Golan, the
West Bank and Gaza. According to Hanan Porat, its director of set-
tlement activities, 'Working in a settlement is a spiritual uplift, an
antidote to the materialism and permissiveness which have swept the
country. This is why the leadership of this country has passed from
the secular into the national-religious camp' (in Mergui and Simonnot
1987: 126-27).
Because of its independence of all political parties, the Gush has
exercised great influence on all governments. While the first settle-
ments were set up by the Labour-led government, the rise to power of
the Likud-led government of Menachem Begin in 1977-an earth-
quake in Israeli politics, when the pariahs of Zionism had replaced the
party that built the nation (Friedman 1992: 20)-gave the movement a
legitimacy at the highest levels of state and brought an end to the cau-
tious settlement policy of the Labour-led administration (Sprinzak
1991: 71-105). Levinger was able to utilize splits within the govern-
ment to establish the settlement of Kiryat Arba. Furthermore, at three
o'clock on a March morning 1979, his wife, Miriam, led the occupa-
tion of the property in the heart of Hebron which became the nucleus
of the some 400 Jews now living in fortress-like conditions among
some 150,000 Palestinians.
All Israeli governments have succumbed to Levinger' s pressures.
The group has pursued a policy of fait accompli. First it establishes
settlements which are 'illegal', and afterwards it receives the govern-
ment's blessing and financial support. The Gush cares little about the
implications of the alleged divine plan for the indigenous population.
The land belongs to the Jews by divine command, which has binding
implications. The universal principle of self-determination does not
hold in the case of Bretz Israel, and hence the demand by the
Palestinians for national self-determination is meaningless. The
Palestinians are gerim (non-Jewish residents), who, according to the
Torah are to be treated with tolerance and respect but not more
(Sprinzak 1985: 31-32). Palestinians have three choices: to acknowl-
edge the legitimacy of the Gush's version of Zionism and to receive
full civil rights; or to obey the laws of the state without formal
recognition of Zionism and be granted the full rights of resident
aliens; or to be granted incentives to emigrate to other Arab countries.
Theologically, the Palestinians are no more than religiously illegit-
imate tenants, and a threat to the redemptive process. Their human
rights are no match for the divine imperative. Armed with the
inerrant certainty of the Torah, which not only justifies violence, but
gives the divine mandate for it, and the glorious example of Joshua,
the Gush pursues its policy of settling, in disregard for the indigenous
population. The ideology of the Gush has strong roots in the national
religious camp and 'is only the tip of an iceberg of a broader religious
subculture, which started its meteoric development in the 1950's'
(Sprinzak 1985: 27). The major reason for its success lies in its having
been able to redefine some of the pioneering values of Zionism at a
time when Zionism had lost most of its foundational vision.
The Tehiya ('Renaissance') Party was founded in 1979 by Professor
Yuval Neeman and Geula Cohen, disillusioned ex-Likud supporters,
following Premier Begin's treason at Camp David. They were joined
soon by members of Gush Emunim and of the Land of Israel
Movement, and Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook gave them his blessing.
Although an atheist, Neeman believes that traditions are important for
a revolutionary movement, and he strongly defends the spiritual her-
itage of the Jewish people, preaches a return to biblical sources, and is
in constant dialogue with the ultra-nationalist-religious groupings. A
renaissance of Zionism would halt the moral decline of Israeli youth.
Tehiya saw itself as a bridge in the 'Kookist' spirit between religious
and secular Jews (Sprinzak 1991: 169).
After extensive Jewish settlement, the Arabs would forget Judea and
Samaria, as they have Galilee. Neeman predicted 20 seats in the 1981
elections but won only 3, and then 5 in 1984. The party agrees that
Israel must not cede an inch, for to do so would be to engage in the
dialectic of retreat and be a prelude to a Palestinian state. Its policy
required the annexation of the Occupied Territories to be made irre-
versible by increasing the number of Jewish settlements. Tehiya' s
coalition of secular and religious Zionism is reflected in the participa-
tion of Raphael Eitan, who was the Israeli army chief of staff (1978-
83) and Rabbi Eliezer Waldman. Having left the army, Eitan joined
Tehiya with his Tzomet (Crossroads) group and announced his plat-
form to annexe the Occupied Territories and deal firmly with recalci-
trant Arabs, favouring collective punishment, and insisting that Arab
parents should be punished for offences committed by their children.
'It is not for us to solve the Palestinian problem. There are 100 mil-
lion Arabs; the Saudis have a $130 billion surplus; let them solve it'
(quoted in Mergui and Simonnot 1987: 113). Eitan was elected to the
Knesset in July 1984.
During this period an underground movement of Jewish radicals
surfaced. This was a loose federation of activists from the settlement
communities, some with former ties with Kach and other religious
groups who share the 'Kookist' ideology, and others reflecting the
pre-state ultra-nationalist undergrounds. Impatient with the 'sub-
servience' of the Gush to the government and with the. tactics of
Kahane, they rejected compromises with the secular government, and
in conformity with the dictates of the land traditions of the Bible con-
sidered war against the enemies as obligatory. They shared with
Kahane the views that the Arabs must be expelled, that democracy
must be rejected and that the Haram el-Sharif (the Temple Mount for
them) must be wrested from the Muslims. Their orthodox purity and
learned interpretation of Scriptures, and their inclusion of prominent
rabbis, give them considerable weight among the Israeli right. Their
home-grown advocacy of Jewish terrorism, unlike that imported by
USA-born Kahane, shocked the Israeli establishment, which, over-
looking its own noble tradition of terrorism in pre-state days and the
many examples of state-sponsored terrorism, had come to denounce it
as a peculiarly Arab barbarism. Sprinzak discusses the theological
ideologies of the various underground groups and the support they
received from prominent rabbis, which transferreq Jewish terrorism
from the margin to the centre of the debate about Jewish identity and
destiny (1991: 252-88). Within 12 years, the movement which began
with Torah-driven but illegal settlement in Judea and Samaria had
become infected with elements which promoted not only illegality but
even indiscriminate terrorism. However offensive to Western liberal-
ism, such a transformation is in line with fidelity to a particular read-
ing of the biblical land traditions.
Within the sphere of more conventional Israeli politics, Rabbi
Eliezer Waldman was re-elected to the Knesset in July 1984. Also a
disciple of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook in Merkaz HaRav, he became the
religious figurehead of the Tehiya movement. With Levinger, he cre-
ated the settlement in Kiryat Arba, which became a hotbed of coloniz-
ing rabbis who spread their roots throughout the West Bank and the
Golan Heights. He feared a polarization in Israeli society between
religious and secular groupings, and justified belonging to Tehiya, a
party which included the profane Neeman, Cohen and Eitan, by insist-
ing on their devotion to Zionism, to the Jewish people, to the land of
Israel, to its social ideals and its pioneer spirit (in Mergui and
Simonnot 1987: 115). While Tehiya had to condemn Jewish terrorism,
Waldman was ambivalent, and was charged with being an instigator of
the attack on the Arab mayors in 1980, but was released for lack of
evidence. For Waldman, it is a matter of divine law that not an inch of
the Promised Land be ceded: 'In 1967, God gave us a unique oppor-
tunity. But the Israelis did not seize it. They did not colonize the
newly conquered land ... It's as if they had refused the offer of the
Almighty while at the same time thanking him. Therefore God
inflicted upon Israel the sufferings of the Yom Kippur War' (in
Mergui and Simonnot 1987: 114).
However, Rafael Eitan split from Tehiya in 1987 and re-established
Tzomet, which won two seats in the 1988 election. It won four seats in
the 1996 election, after which Eitan was rewarded for his alignment
with Likud by being made Minister of Agriculture and Environment
Quality in the Netanyahu government.
Another indication of the movement to the right in the religious
camp is provided by Rabbi Haim Drukman, a senior Gush activist and
also a student of Rabbi Yehuda Kook, who was elevated to number
two on the NRP list for the 1977 elections and elected to the Knesset.
He became disillusioned with the party's attitudes towards Greater
Israel, and in 1981 was re-elected under the banner of his own party,
Matzad. On the eve of the 1984 elections Matzad joined with Poalei
Agudat Israel (a religious, working-class party) to form Morasha
(Tradition), which became a combination of the pioneering move-
ments of early Israel and religious fundamentalism, and won two seats
in the Knesset. For Drukman 'Zionism is part of the Torah. You
cannot separate the two. Just as you can't say: "I believe in the Torah
but not in the Sabbath" ... If I believe in the Torah, I also believe in
Zionism' (Mergui and Simonnot 1987: 167). Drukman subsequently
dissolved Morasha and rejoined the NRP, having ensured that it would
allow Gush Enumim people into all echelons of the party.
Since 1985 another radical ultra-nationalist, Rehavam Ze' evi, pro-
posed the negotiated 'transfer' of all the Arabs in the Occupied
Territories to the neighbouring Arab countries. He founded Moledet
(Homeland) and made 'transfer' the sole plank of its platform, and,
together with his colleague Professor Yair Sprinzak, was elected to
the Knesset in the 1988 election. While in 1984 even most of the radi-
cal right judged Kahane, whose Kach alone called for expulsion of the
Arabs, to be a racist, the concept of 'transfer' was alive and well in
the public debate of 1988, despite the damage the creation of yet
another 'Arab refugee problem' would cause internationally. Ze'evi's
slogan, 'We are here, they are there, and peace for Israel!' enjoyed
tremendous appeal. His literature demonstrates the central role of
'transfer' in Zionist ideology and praxis and berates the hypocrisy of
the centre-left establishment, which, from the high moral ground of
their kibbutzim founded on former Arab soil, accused him of racism
and Kahanism (see Sprinzak 1991: 173-74).
Orthodox Rabbis
Nearly all the religious parties, and the overwhelming majority of
Orthodox rabbis in Israel, have denounced the so-called peace process
between Israel, the Palestinians and its Arab neighbours. In the midst
of the prolonged halakhic debates on whether one may or may not
cede Jewish land (i.e. land taken from the Arabs) to non-Jews, consid-
erations of the human rights of non-Jews is never brought into the
picture. Some of the most vociferous and extreme opponents of terri-
torial compromise come from the Orthodox religious camp.
Some Orthodox rabbis have issued statements from time to time
reflecting their practical hermeneutic of the biblical traditions of land.
Rabbi Schlomo Goren (1917-94), a former Israeli Chief Rabbi
(1973-83) and Chief Military Rabbi, typified the fusion of Orthodox
and political extremism that gave rise to Gush Emunim, and called on
soldiers to disobey any orders they might receive to dismantle Jewish
settlements in the Occupied Territories. He decried 'concessions' to
the Palestinians, demanded that a synagogue be built on the Temple
Mount in Jerusalem and wrote that Yasser Arafat deserved death
(Landau 1994 ). Rabbi Goren distributed leaflets to synagogues
throughout the Occupied Territories on 18 December 1993 reiterating
that Jews had a God-given right to the biblical land of Israel. On the
following day he rejected the view that he was inciting rebellion and
argued that the supreme law in the land was the law of Moses: 'Any
other orders contradictory to the orders of Moses [are] a rebellion
against Moses, against the Torah, against Judaism. There does not
exist any kind of rebellion if the refusal is based on obeying the laws
of Moses' (from Derek Brown in Jerusalem, The Guardian, Monday,
20 December 1993).
Rabbi Ben Yosef, formerly Baruch Greene who came on aliyah
from New York in 1976, was a candidate for mayor of Jerusalem in
1993. His Torah-observance demanded a totally Jewish Jerusalem:
There should be no mosques nor churches in Jerusalem ... No goyim
should be allowed to live in Jerusalem at all ... They can visit here, yes, but
not live here. There should be no idol worship in the city at all ...
Jerusalem has no borders. It should be constantly expanding. The bigger
the better, until Damascus (in S. Leibowitz 1993).
Dissenting Voices
Of course, the ideology and tactics of Gush Emunim and other
broadly aligned groups have not progressed without opposition from
within both the secular and the religious camps. In addition to the
religious groups which do not attach significance to the notion of a
nation state, and some which regard it as an apostasy,
48
the religious
constituency has seen the rise of several human rights groups (Oz
veShalom, Netivot Shalom, Rabbis for Human Rights, Clergy for
48. The ultra-Orthodox Haredim claim that the survival of the Jewish people rests
above all on the keeping of Torah, and they stress that a Torah society comes before
a specific territory. Their concern is to ensure the land is worth protecting. They
adopt an attitude of indifference or hostility towards the state. The Orthodox Jews of
Mea Shearim still hold that Israel was the work of Satan. The ultra-Orthodox NEturei
Karta rejects the existence of the state, and maintains that the existence of Israel is a
sacrilege, as Jews are to wait for the Messiah before their biblical homeland can be
regained. The group wants Israel to be replaced by a Palestinian state and the mem-
bers consider themselves 'Palestinian Jews'. Rabbi Hirsh, the head of the group,
insists on Israel's destruction. The Satmar Chasidim, from Brooklyn, also are viru-
lently anti-Zionist. They mount anti-Zionist demonstrations outside the Israeli con-
sulate. Their late leader, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, intimated that he would rather see his
movement disappear than accept a Jewish state not brought to life by the Messiah
(Geoffrey Paul, Jewish Chronicle, 8 July 1994, p. 22).
Peace, etc.), which emphasize the supremacy of the moral values of
Judaism over the territorial ones stressed by the Gush. In general,
however, they bypass the foundational injustice associated with Zion-
ism, and their critique relates only to the abuses of human rights in
the Occupied Territories. Whether the fervour of their observance of
the Torah has been infected by the values of the Enlightment or
moderated by the more universalist of the Hebrew prophetic tradition
is subject to speculation.
Lord Jakobovits accuses the Orthodox camp in Israel of having sup-
ported the politics of might and violence in exchange for financial
favours. He bemoans the 'bankruptcy' of traditional spiritual leader-
ship there, and accuses the Orthodox rabbis of 'maintaining a stance of
complacent self-righteousness' which seems to have departed com-
pletely from the prophetic tradition. It was the religious Jews who
kept the Israeli Government in power during the Lebanese invasion,
'leaving it to the secularists to articulate the Jewish conscience and sal-
vage the Jewish honour. What a perverse reversal of our roles!'
(Jewish Chronicle, 18 August 1995, p. 17). In September 1995, sev-
eral rabbis from the nationalist wing of the Orthodox religious sector
issued a document in support of the Action Committee for the
Abolition of the Autonomy Plan. The recently deceased Y eshayahu
Leibowitz, a strictly Orthodox Jew, and Of!e of the foremost Jewish
scholars of his day, regarded the entire religious establishment with
contempt and the mix of religion and politics as poisonous. In the
immediate aftermath of the Six Day War, when the entire country was
in the grip of religious euphoria, he warned: 'This brilliant victory
will be a historical and political disaster for the state of Israel.' He
denounced the Western Wall as a disco and said he would gladly
return it to the Arabs (Bermant 1994: 21).
On the secular side, a plethora of human and civil rights groups has
grown up (Peace Now, ACRI, B'Tselem, Israeli Women against the
Occupation, Women in Black, Yesh Gevul, Parents against Moral
Erosion, and others [see, e.g. Hurwitz 1992: 197-208]). However,
unlike the Gush, which has substantial facts on the ground, these
organizations confine themselves to protest in words and demonstra-
tions, most recently in processions from the grave of Yitzhak Rabin,
whose murder has purified him of his crimes against humanity and
virtually canonized him as the patron saint of the peace camp. His
(reluctant) handshake with Arafat on the White House Lawn and
signing of the 13 September 1993 Declaration of Principles proved to
be Rabin's downfall. While for much of the world it symbolized a
new hope and a new beginning, for the religious messianists and ultra-
nationalists it spelled disaster, and the end of the dream of an undi-
vided, full-blooded Jewish state on the west of the Jordan. Rabin the
traitor, the obstacle to the divine schema, had to be removed.
Conclusion
Whereas modern universalistic thinking sees anti-Semitism as one
form of social, legal and political discrimination to be addressed
constitutionally within the structure of states and on the basis of civil
rights, for Theodor Herzl the solution to the Jewish problem could not
be found in making the host countries more tolerant and liberal, but
only in the establishment of a state in which Jews could live in a
purely Jewish land in full respect for their Jewish identity and
'apartness'. Although himself fully assimilated, he regarded the
European countries as incapable of tolerating Jews, who were alien-
ated by being a people apart and by their non-conformist practices.
His refuge in nationalist colonialism eschewed a constitutional and
civil rights' solution.
From its conception in the late 1890s to its implementation since,
Zionism, although distinctive in some critical respects, was a political
ideology, sharing much in common with nineteenth-century European
nationalisms and colonialisms. In line with prevailing European
racisms which predicated inferiority of all native peoples, Zionism
determined to improve the lot of international Jewry at the expense of
the indigenous population of Palestine. To achieve success, its pro-
gramme required the support of major international powers, initially
of Britain, and more recently of the United States. The existence of a
friendly state in the strategically important Middle East would be of
considerable value to the foreign policy interests of first Britain and
then the USA.
Although the Zionist conquest of Palestine has many precedents
(e.g. the European settlement in North America, or the British one in
Australia and New Zealand), it had several unique features. The dis-
placement took place within decades rather than two or three cen-
turies. Secondly, the Zionist colonization took place after the heyday
of European colonization, at a time when the European colonizing
nations were beginning to respect the right to self-determination of
indigenous populations and when the very notion of colonization was
beginning to break down. Thirdly, most of the Zionist colonization
has taken place in an age of mass communications, although until
recently, it has managed to portray itself as an innocent victim reaping
its just rewards. But, most distinctively, the Zionist colonial enterprise
has widespread religious support, Christian as well as Jewish, and in
most theological and religious circles is viewed as being consistent
with biblical prophecy, or at least being no more than what the Jewish
people deserve in virtue of the promises of God outlined in the Bible.
Much of the thrust in Zionism derives from a literalist interpreta-
tion of the biblical witness to land and of some of its messianic texts,
with scant attention to the rights of the indigenes. However, as an
agent of legitimacy in international law, the Zionist appeal to Tanakh
for legitimation of its claims to Bretz Israel is not much more com-
pelling than if the Portuguese and Spanish Governments today pre-
sented to the UN the bulls of Nicholas V and Alexander VI, which
also claimed divine authority, in their bid to reclaim the lands of the
New World (Lamadrid 1981: 346). In any case, no claim can be
accorded an absolute status, but must be weighed up in conjunction
with the claims of others.
With respect to the indigenous non-Jews of Palestine, one detects a
disjuncture between the ideals of the preamble to Israel's Declaration
of Independence (14 May 1948) and the real cost of the enterprise:
The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the ingath-
ering of the exiles. It will foster the development of the country for the
benefit of all its inhabitants: it will be based on freedom, justice and peace
as envisaged by the prophets of Israel. It will ensure complete equality of
social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, con-
science, language, education, and culture; it will safeguard the Holy
places of all religions and it will be faithful to the principles of the charter
of the United Nations.
It would appear in some formulations of the Zionist victory that the
indigenes should appreciate their passive path to redemption via the
Jewish homecoming. There is no shortage of utopian idealizations of
the promise of God's gift to the children of Israel: 'The union of
people and land is intended to contribute to the perfecting of the
world in order to become the Kingdom of God' (Buber 1973: 47).
Whereas other nations who dispossessed indigenous people can legiti-
mately be accused of robbery,
Their charge against Israel is totally unjust for it acted under authority and
in the confident knowledge of its authorization ... No other people has ever
heard and accepted the command from heaven as did the people of
Israel. .. So long as it sincerely carried out the command it was in the right
and is in the right in so far as it still carries it out. Its unique relationship to
its land must be seen in this light. .. Where a command and a faith are pre-
sent, in certain historical situations conquest need not be robbery (Buber
1973: 146).
For Andre Neher too, Palestine holds the key to Jewish existence. He
writes of a 'geo-theology' and its charm, and supports the view that
aliyah will foreshorten the redemption of the whole world and the
coming of the Messiah (1992: 22-23). But the spiritual and moral
tenets of the Torah must be obeyed, because otherwise the land will
vomit Israel forth, as it previously vomited the Canaanites, 'to whom
God had confided it in a moment of hasty imprudence' (Neher 1992:
20). The State of Israel is the agent of mass reconciliation: of Jews,
Christians and Muslims; of the sacred and the profane; and of Jews
who differ in their messianic expectations (1992: 27-29). The recon-
ciliatory impact of the return-to-Zion enterprise does not appear quite
so sanguine from my perspective as I write, overlooking the 'border'
checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem and surrounded by so
many signs of colonial plunder, as well as witnessing the daily humil-
iation of the indigenous population, which is made to experience
alienation and exile within its own homeland.
There is no doubt that the Jewish religious establishment, although
late in embracing Zionism, today fully supports its achievement. For
many religious Jews, the State of Israel is 'the most powerful collec-
tive expression' of Jewry and 'the most significant development in
Jewish life since the Holocaust' (Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of
Britain). Moreover, the religious wing is at the forefront of the
opposition to political 'compromise' (a euphemism for 'restitution')
with the Palestinians, with very few Orthodox rabbis supporting it,
and many at the vanguard of its destruction. It is a matter of concern
that religious Jews have little regard for the indigenes who have paid
the price for the establishment of Israel. But neither did Joshua in the
biblical narrative.
The rhetoric of the sacral discourse of the achievement of Zionism
is undermined by the reality of the catastrophe for the indigenous
population. The establishment of a Jewish state involved the eviction
of the majority of the Palestinians, the destruction of most of their
173
villages and the continual use of force and state terrorism, wars and
military operations. The daily humiliation of the indigenous people
and the litany of other atrocities casts a dark cloud over the achieve-
ment of the ethnocentric dream of nineteenth-century Jewish national-
ist colonialists. What is most distressing from a moral and religious
perspective is that the major ideological support for Zionist imperial-
ism and the principal obstacle against treating the indigenous people
with respect come from religious circles for whom the biblical narra-
tives of land are normative. Already in 1913, the bad behaviour of
Zionists towards the Palestinians made Ahad Ha' am fear for the future
if Jews ever came to power: 'If this be the "Messiah": I do not wish to
see his coming' (in Lehn 1988: 13).
Chapter 5
FABRICATING COLONIAL MYTHS
There are factors in the case of colonization which make the analysis
of change much simpler than in most other cases of social transfor-
mation. Colonization results from the determination of a group to
encroach upon a foreign terrain. The social transformation that fol-
lows is not the result of laissez faire policies, or of unpredictable
changes in the body politic, but proceeds according to an overall plan
which is put into place with some haste, reflecting the determination
of the colonizers to alter radically the politics of the region in favour
of the colonists.
Across the broad spectrum of colonial enterprises, one detects
recurring attitudes towards the indigenous population. It was consid-
ered to be part of the natural wealth of the region, providing cheap
labour etc. Where miscegenation was an option, the indigenous
women were a resource to gratify the male colonizers and maintain
the population. Where religious or cultural motivation was important,
the natives became targets for fulfilling the mission of the colonizers,
by spreading the 'superior' religion or culture of the homeland,
thereby 'civilizing' the original inhabitants. When hostility was
encountered, it was overcome, but, under the right circumstances, an
accommodation was made.
Immigrant-settler societies were established in North America,
South America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Algeria, etc.,
and each had distinctive modes of dealing with the indigenous popula-
tion. 'Frontiers of inclusion' included the original inhabitants in the
enterprise, and initially this was the case in South America (Hennessy
1978: 147). On the other hand, 'frontiers of exclusion' excluded the
original inhabitants from the new arrangements (for example, in
North America and, except by way of using them as cheap labour, in
South Africa and Zionist Palestine). Several motivations combined to
5. Fabricating Colonial Myths 175
exclude the indigenes, and for those influenced by religious consid-
erations, the biblical paradigm provided a ready justification for it.
The exclusivist tendencies in North America and South Africa have
been ascribed to the influence of the Old Testament in the Puritan
faith in the case of the former, and in the Dutch Reformed Church in
the latter (see Bastide 1972; Gerhard 1959; Hartz 1964).
1
The Comparative Myths of Colonialism
The discourse of comparative historiography provides a framework
for discussing our examples of colonialism. Parallel comparative
history examines different historical cases, generally from quite dis-
parate regions of the world (see e.g. Eisenstadt 1963). Contrast com-
parative history emphasizes distinctive features in disparate social
processes, allowing patterns of similarity to suggest themselves. In
general, it is assumed that each social complex (nation, empire, civi-
lization) constitutes an intricate and unique socio-historical con-
figuration in its own right (see e.g. Geertz 1971; Lang 1975).
Predictably, there is an approach which, while respecting the speci-
ficity of each society, recognizes that the particularities of each
individual situation may suggest new historical generalizations.
Macro-causal analysis attempts to identify elements which are both
favourable and unfavourable to an hypothesis.
I have analyzed each of the examples of colonialism independently,
to avoid overemphasizing those elements which fit in with a theory to
which one is predisposed. While no attempt was made to force them
into an undifferentiated sameness, patterns of similarity appear in all
four, as the following chart suggests.
1. Algeria reflects an intermediate mode (Nora 1961). After it had been occupied
in 1844, the Europeans disallowed the traditional land titles of the Berber tribes,
since the primary determination of the settlers was to acquire their land and obtain
cheap Berber/Muslim labour (Pickles 1963: 23). The Muslims had the status of
colonial subjects, and by the time the process was over, the majority of the fertile
land was in the hands of European settlers (Gordon 1966: 51-52). The takeover was
justified in terms of the superiority of the settlers to the natives. Jules Roy, an
Algerian-born Frenchman sums up the situation as he saw it: 'One thing I knew
because it was told to me so often, was that the Arabs belonged to a different race,
one inferior to my own. We had come to clear their land and bring them civilization'
(Roy 1961: 17).
Old Latin South Zionism
Testament America Africa
Chosen or privileged people yes yes yes yes
Racially superior yes yes yes yes
Frontiers of inclusion no yes no no
Extermination of indigenes yes limited limited limited
Displacement of indigenes yes limited limited yes
Corralling of indigenes no yes yes yes
Enslavement of indigenes yes yes yes yes
Miscegenation and intermarriage no yes no no
Religious motivation yes yes yes yes
Attempt at conversion of indigenes no yes limited no
Compunction no yes yes no
In each case, for example, the incoming society established itself
through a violent injustice to the indigenous population. The Exodus-
Conquest motif in the biblical narrative is unique in that it presents the
Israelites as escaping from slavery into possession of another land. A
case can be made for an analogous context for Zionism, except that
the conquering immigrants did not hail from one oppressive context,
and many came from societies in which there was nothing approach-
ing slavery.
The modem examples do not display any grand unitary theory, such
as one that ascribes the colonization to the imperative of the biblical
paradigm. It is clear that the motivations and methods used, and the
time-scale in which each colonization was effected differ. In particu-
lar, there was considerable variation in the role of religious and bibli-
cal motivation in the complex web of impulses propelling each
enterprise. Nevertheless, despite such obvious differences, one detects
similarities, both with respect to the intentions of the colonizing
enterprise and the undeilying world view by which it was justified.
A core element in the colonizing rhetoric is that the adventurous
Europeans pioneered in a savage wilderness and brought civilization
to it. Such myths disguise the truth that Europe's glory was gained at
the expense of the tragedy of the indigenous populations. In rationaliz-
ing the subjugation and near-extermination of the indigenes, these
myths stifle moral scruples and suppress embarrassing facts. Francis
Jennings's description of the myths describing the invasion of North
America are apposite to our discussion, and suggest that we are deal-
ing with a stereotypical myth of colonialism.
5. Fabricating Colonial Myths
The basic conquest myth postulates that America was virgin land. or
wilderness, inhabited by nonpeople called savages; that these savages
were creatures sometimes defined as demons, sometimes as beasts 'in the
shape of men'; that their mode of existence and cast of mind were such as
to make them incapable of civilization and therefore of full humanity; that
civilization was required by divine sanction or the imperative of progress
to conquer the wilderness and make it a garden; that the savage creatures
of the wilderness, being unable to adapt to any environment other than the
wild, stubbornly and viciously resisted God or fate, and thereby incurred
their suicidal extermination; that civilization and its bearers were refined
and ennobled in their contest with the dark powers of the wilderness; and
that it all was inevitable (Jennings 1976: 15).
Fabricating Colonial Myths
177
To compare colonizing enterprises is not to pretend to equate them.
While there are differences in the effects of colonization from one
region and period to another, one detects a uniformity in the mythol-
ogy of conquest, which is expressed, with variations on the theme, in a
wide range of colonial enterprises. Typical elements cluster around
the presumption of a right to conquer and settle a land, for some
combination of the following reasons:
1. The land was in a virgin state or, in the case of an already
inhabited land, habitation was irregular (the 'virgin land or
wilderness' myth).
2. The people (to be) conquered were of an inferior status, and
the colonizers enjoyed an inalienable right to resist opposi-
tion from the indigenes (the myth of 'self-defence').
3. The mission to civilize or evangelize.
4. The enterprise was legitimized by appealing to such an
unchallenged ideological motivation (e.g. to 'civilize' or
evangelize the natives-the myth of 'purity of arms').
Although the colonizing enterprises pretended to altruistic motives,
invariably the colonizers benefited through wreaking havoc on the
indigenous populations (the Legacy-the myth of 'we deserve it').
Frequently, there were 'historical myths' which were specific to each
myth of origins (e.g. the Great Trek, in the case of South Africa).
We have already seen how these elements appear in the instances of
colonialism we have examined. It is instructive to present in 'parallel'
columns a selection of stereotypical perspectives from each.
1. The 'Virgin Land or Wilderness' Myth. Jennings postulates a
'standard conquest myth', whose core component is that the territory
to be colonized was 'virgin land or wilderness' (1976: 15). This pro-
vides a justification for the colonizers, often retrospectively, guaran-
teeing the rights of people living there to stay put. A refinement of
this myth is that, at most, the land was sparsely inhabited, often by
unsettled tribes (bedouin or aboriginal), whose unsettled state
deprived them of the rights that are accorded to those who have
worked the land. The myth was used to justify the English conquest of
North America,
2
and the Nazi conquest of Eastern Europe.
3
Hitler's
Lebensraum policy was inspired by the conquest of North America.
Although he indulged in the rhetoric of Ostraum, Hitler knew full
well that Eastern Europe was overpopulated. His solution included the
part extermination and part expulsion ('transfer of population') of the
Slavs, with the remnant being confined to undeveloped enclaves ('we
will isolate them in their own pigsties'), serving the German master
race as a helot population. Meanwhile, millions of ethnic Germans
would be relocated to the East, until 'our settlers are numerically
superior to the natives'. Hitler saw himself in the line of European
colonizers whose racial superiority conferred on them the right to
dominate (in Finkelstein 1995: 93-94). Corresponding elements can be
traced with respect to the Spanish-Portuguese conquest of Latin
America, the Afrikaner conquest of southern Africa and the Zionist
conquest of Palestine. The pretence that the land was 'empty' is an
integral part of the colonizing myth. When it made no sense to pre-
tend that it was empty, it became clear that its inhabitants were of a
far inferior category:
2. England was 'full' while North America was 'empty, spacious and void ... Its
few inhabitants run over the grass as do the foxes and wild beasts' (1622 author).
Finkelstein (1995: 89-92) gives many examples of typical colonial attitudes in the
conquest of North America. Recurring features allude to elements such as the follow-
ing: the inadequate habitation by 'fierce savages' of the vast terrain, which was
crying out for improvement by labour, and 'destined by the Creator to support a large
population and be a seat of civilization, of science, and of true religion'.
3. Eastern Europe was 'thinly settled', 'desert', 'desolate', etc. (Hitler). See
Finkelstein 1995: 92-94, and his sources, pp. 197-98.
5. Fabricating Colonial Myths
Latin America
There is no claim in the
case of the mediaeval
Spanish and Portuguese
plunder of Latin America
that the region was
uninhabited.
South Africa
The conventional
account of the origins of
the black southern
Africans: The blacks
started settling in the
northern part of the
country more or less at
the same time as the first
white people began set-
tling at the southern tip
of the country during the
seventeenth century.
The black settlements in
South Africa were not
purposive or permanent
in the Western sense. As
soon as one parcel of
cultivated land was
exhausted they moved
on in search of virgin
soil.
Palestine
'A land without a people
for a people without a
land.'
'There is no Arab people
living in intimate fusion
with the country, utiliz-
ing its resources and
stamping it with a char-
acteristic impress: there
is at best an Arab
encampment' (Zangwill
1920: 104).
'A wild landscape
devoid of trade and
shade ... where the inhab-
itants were strange and
alien, wild like the land
itself, and 'desolate
under Arab rule'
(Shapira 1992: 53, 214).
There is 'a profusion of
evidence' that Palestine
was 'uninhabited' on the
eve of the modem
Zionist colonization
(Peters 1984: 170).
4
179
2. The Myth of Racial Superiority. Racism is a conception which is
founded on the premise of physical and psychological inequalities
between races, enabling one to distinguish between the 'aristocracy'
and the 'rabble'. It served as the pretext for the ruthless exploitation,
and sometimes extermination of indigenous populations in a range of
areas which were subjected to colonialism. Invariably, the natives
were considered to be inferior:
4. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Prime Minister Golda Meir and Shimon Peres
are on record along the same lines.
180
Latin America
In their pre-Christian
phase, the Indians
'went about everywhere
making war and assault-
ing people in order to
sacrifice them, offering
their hearts and human
blood to the demons, in
which many innocents
suffered' (Fray Toribio,
in Lockhart and Otte
1976: 241).
The first and original
inhabitants here in New
Spain .. .lived as sav-
ages ... They neither
sowed nor cultivated the
earth' (Fray Toribio in
Lockhart and Otte 1976:
220-21).
'Because it is natural
that prudent, honest and
humane men should
rule over those who are
not, it follows that
Spaniards have the per-
fect right to rule over
the barbarians of the
New World, who in
prudence, intellect,
virtue and humanity are
as much inferior to the
Spaniards as children
are to adults, and
women are to men. The
barbarian races were
wild and cruel, as com-
pared with the Spanish
who were a race of the
greatest clemency'
(Sepulveda).
The Bible and Colonialism
South Africa
The Afrikaner textbooks
identified three principal
races in pre-colonial
southern Africa:
Bushmen, who were true
savages and were the
oldest race in the region,
Hottentots, who were
slightly higher and came
later from the north, and
'Kaffirs', who were bar-
barians rather than sav-
ages, and who originated
in Asia and 'trekked'
southward in compara-
tively recent times
(Thompson 1985:96-
97).
The Xhosa people were
'a race of monsters,
who, being the unpro-
voked destroyers, and
implacable foes of Her
Majesty's Christian sub-
jects, have forfeited
every claim to mercy or
consideration' and
should have been exter-
minated (William
Cornwallis Harris, in
Thompson 1985: 88).
Palestine
Prime Minister Begin
likened Palestinians to
'two-legged animals', and
his successor Yitzhak
Shamir compared a
Palestinian to a 'fly' and a
'grasshopper', and
declared that they were
'brutal, wild, alien
invaders in the Land of
Israel' (Neff 1993: 13).
Expounding on the
Jewish right to Palestine,
Winston Churchill said: 'I
do not agree that the dog
in a manger has the final
right to the manger, even
though he may have lain
there for a very long time.
I do not admit... that a
great wrong has been
done to the Red Indians of
America .. .I do not admit
that a wrong has been
done to these people by
the fact that a stronger
race, a higher grade race,
or at any rate, a more
world-wise race ... has
come in and taken their
place' (in Ponting 1994:
254).
Latin America
'On the mainland they
eat human flesh. They
are more given to
sodomy than any other
nation ... They are
stupid and silly ... They
are brutal. They are
incapable of learn-
ing ... They eat fleas,
spiders and worms
raw ... The older they get
the worse they
become ... They become
like real brutes' (Tomas
Ortiz, in Todorov 1984:
150-51 ).
South Africa
According to James
Bryce, later British
ambassador in
Washington, not only
had the black peoples
made no progress, but
the Afrikaners them-
selves were victims of
the degeneration theory:
severed from Europe for
200 years, they had gone
backwards (in
Thompson 1985: 94).
3. The Vision to Civilize or Evangelize
Latin America
While the fundamental
motive of the
Portuguese-Spanish
was their insatiable
greed and ambition, the
greatest ever seen in the
world (Las Casas, in
Dussell990: 41), the
alleged theological
motivation was the
fulfilment of an 'ideal
of Christendom'. The
New world was to be
civilized and
evangelized.
The civilized Spaniards
would bring the most
salutary benefits to the
barbarians, who hardly
deserved the name of
human being, convert-
ing them from being
slothful and
South Africa
Agents of civilization
and evangelization, the
heroic voortrekkers set
out on the noble task of
taming the wilderness,
and bringing civilization
to the natives.
Palestine
'Palestine is not so much
occupied by the Arabs as
over-run by them. They
are nomads, who have
created in Palestine neither
material nor spiritual
values ... We cannot allow
the Arabs to block so
valuable a piece of historic
reconstruction, so roman-
tic a reparation to the
sorely-tried race of the
Apostles' (Zangwill 1920:
92-93).
Palestine
'We should there [in
Palestine] form a portion
of the rampart of Europe
against Asia, an outpost
of civilization opposed to
barbarism' (Herzl: 1896:
96).
'[The Jewish national
centre] will be good for
the world, good for the
Jews and good for the
British Empire. But we
also think it will be good
for the Arabs who dwell
in Palestine, and we
182
wtin America
libidinous to being
honest and honourable.
They would be rescued
from being irreligious
and enslaved to demons
to become Christians and
worshippers of the true
God (Sepulveda).
South Africa Palestine
intend that it shall be good
for them, and they shall
not be sufferers or sup-
planted in the country in
which they dwell or
denied their share in all
that makes for its progress
and prosperity ... '
(Winston Churchill, in
Palestine, March 1921, in
Ingrams 1972: 119).
4. The Myth of Legitimacy: The Religious Mandate
wtin America
'Your highnesses ... have
seen fit to send me,
Christopher Colombus,
to the said parts of the
Indies to see ... what way
there may be to convert
them to our holy faith'
(in Las Casas 1989-94:
XIV, 41).
'My task has been and is
to teach them Christian
doctrine generally, con-
veying it to them in their
language ... making tours
and seeking to destroy
the idols and idolatries'
(Fray Pedro de Gantin,
in Lockhart and Otte
1976: 213-14).
The Legacy
wtin America
Humiliation of native
cultures and religions.
South Africa
While there was some
missionary activity, the
Afrikaner society was
more intent on preserv-
ing its separate civilized
condition than in
'evangelizing' the
natives.
South Africa
Humiliation of native
cultures and religions.
Palestine
'Anyone who disputes
Israel's right to the land
of Canaan is actually
opposing God and his
holy covenant with the
Patriarchs. He is striving
against sacred, inviolable
words and promises of
God, which he has sworn
to keep' (Schlink 1991:
22).
'The time has come for
evangelicals to affirm
their belief in biblical
prophecy and Israel's
divine right to the Holy
Land' ('Evangelicals'
Concern for Israel', Paid
Advertisement, Christian
Science Monitor, 3
November 1977).
Palestine
Humiliation of indige-
nous population.
Latin America South Africa Palestine
'(a) Genocide through South Africa has the Creation of 714,000
occupation ... European greatest recorded refugees in 1948, and of
diseases ... excessive inequality of any country 300,000 in the 1967
exploitation ... causing of the world, with two- War.
the extermination of over thirds of the black popu-
seventy-five million ... lation surviving below a
(b) Violent usurpation of defined minimum level,
our territories. and nine million people Plunder of Arab land.
(c) The fragmentation of completely destitute.
our socio-political and Economic exploitation.
cultural organizations.
(d) Ideological and reli-
gious subjection' (Ecu- Political subservience.
menical Consultation, in
Beozzo 1990: 79).
Apartheid
Latin America South Africa Palestine
A continuous supply of The Natives Act (1923) Apartheid means
cheap and docile labour decreed that urban 'separateness' or
was essential. The most African 'locations' 'apartness', which in
telling device was to should be separated from Hebrew is hafrada, the
concentrate the Indian the white towns. term used in Israel to
populations into congre- Segregation enabled the define the 'peace
gaciones, or in Brazil cities to function with process'.
into aldeias or villages. black workers, but with-
Ostensibly, this was to out their presence in Israel practises racial,
facilitate the work of numbers sufficient to ethnic and religious dis-
evangelization, but in disturb white domina- crimination in the fields
reality it was aimed at tion, and was formally of residential segrega-
ensuring that the whites institutionalized in the tion, job opportunity and
could have their land. apartheid laws. political rights.
The indigenous people Under the terms of the Oslo II gives the
are confined to reserves, Act, the Africans, Palestine National
discriminated against in although 67 per cent of Authority (PNA) effec-
education, health and the population, kept only tive control over 4 per
housing, and exploited 7. 3 per cent of the land. centoftheland,and
in all ways possible For a while they were limited administrative
(Richard 1990a: 64-65). restricted to reserves, but responsibility for 98 per
since they were needed cent of the Palestinian
for cheap labour, population of the West
Bank. Movement
between the zones under
184
Latin America
'You are all in mortal
sin, and live and die in
it, because of the cruelty
and tyranny you practice
among the innocent
people. Say with what
right and justice you
keep these Indians in
such cruel and horrible
slavery. By what
authority have you
waged such detestable
wars on these peoples,
who were living on their
own lands, inoffensively
and peacefully, and
exterminated such vast
numbers of them with
deaths and slaughter. .. so
that you can seize and
acquire gold every day'
(Fray Anton de
Montesinos, in Las
Casas' account in
Historia de las Jndias,
bk III, ch. 4)
South Africa
the segregation spread
into the white areas
(Kimmerling 1983: 6
n.).
'The existence of the
coloured races is an
immense benefit, as, by
means of them, cheap
labour is obtainable, and
large agricultural sup-
plies can be constantly
procured; but Southern
Africa, although its
population chiefly com-
prises the descendants of
stalwart nomadic races
who have migrated from
a northern part of the
continent, is eminently a
White man's country,
where homes can be
found for millions of the
overflowing population
ofEurope' (Alexander
Wilmot, in Thompson
1985: 93).
Palestine
the PNA is restricted by
the Israeli authorities.
Note also the closure of
Jerusalem to West
Bankers and Gazans
since March 1993, lead-
ing to economic strangu-
lation, and social
deprivation.
Before the intifada up to
I 00,000 Gazans crossed
the Erez checkpoint to
work daily in Israel.
After the Gulf War, the
number fell to some
56,000, and that number
has fallen intermittently,
down to some 13,000 in
March I 996. Moreover,
there have been some
300 days of total closure
from the establishment
of the PNA in May 1994
to March 1996.
Even if the arrangement in columns lacks a certain academic elegance,
it does suggest the moral problematic in a striking, comparative fash-
ion. Without pretending that 'parallels' indicate equivalence, there is a
substantial similarity in underlying attitudes, and in specific techniques
of colonization.
The Myths of Zionism
Although Zionism has much in common with the other forms of set-
tler colonialism we have discussed, some aspects give it an unique
position in the discourse. Even though nationalist colonialism is long
out of vogue with liberal Western intellectuals, and is an object of dis-
dain among Christian theologians, support for Zionism, at least up to
recently, has been widespread. Its claims rest on a combination of
divine right, unique historical claim and compelling need. The
justification for the existence of a Jewish state includes appeal to the
biblical mandate, to the historical right, to persistent diaspora longing,
to the Shoah, to the decision of the United Nations, to the reality of
military conquest, to the unbroken Jewish residence in the land, and so
on. Since the relative value attached to each element of legitimation
has varied at different stages and among different groups, it is naive
to construct a composite legitimization by blending together the dis-
parate components, reducing them to a form in which their unique
identity is subsumed and their relative importance is undifferentiated.
Many Jews allege an unique derivative link between the biblical
paradigm of conquest and Zionist settler colonialism today. If other
forms of colonization could appeal to the alleged legitimization pro-
vided by the biblical mandate, the Jewish claim was unrivalled.
Uniquely in the case of colonialism, Zionism appeals to an historical
link between the settler population and the land to be settled: all Jews
have an historical right to the land, in virtue of unbroken habitation
there by Israelites/Jews, even when at times the Jewish population of
the region was very small.
The Foundational Myths of the State of Israel
~ early realization by the pantheon of its ideologues that the Zionist
dream would require an Arab nightmare was carefully kept from the
wider public. Moreover, after 1948, the history of events was scrupu-
lously fabricated into foundation myths, involving 'the voluntary emi-
gration of Arabs', 'making the desert bloom', and being 'the only
democracy in the Middle East' etcj<\fter the establishment of the State
of Israel, Zionists began systematically to rewrite Palestinian history,
legitimizing Jewish and repudiating Arab claims to the land:
5
the land
had been virtually vacant for the 1800 years since the expulsion of the
Jews; Arabs had lost any right to the land in virtue of having allowed
it to become a wasteland; the new Jewish settlers had now redeemed it,
and so on. Ben-Gurion claimed that on the eve of Zionist colonization,
Palestine was in 'a virtual state of anarchy ... primitive, neglected and
derelict'. Jewish settlement 'revitalized' the land. The indigenous Arab
population became the 'Arab problem' (Ben-Gurion 1971: xx, 25,
47).
One of the most successful propaganda campaigns in modern times
has succeeded in masking the fact that the creation of the State of
Israel resulted in the dispossession and dispersion of another people.
According to Benny Morris, the official fabricated Zionist history of
Israel claims:
1. Zionism's birth was an inevitable result of Gentile pressures
and persecution, and offered at least a partial solution to the
'Jewish Problem' in Europe.
2. The Zionists intended no ill to the Arabs of Palestine. Zionist
settlement alongside the Arabs did not, from the Jews' point
of view, necessitate a clash or displacement.
3. However, Israel was born into an uncharitable, predatory
environment. Zionist efforts at compromise and conciliation
were rejected by the Arabs, and the Palestinians and the
neighbouring Arab states, selfish and ignoble, attacked the
Yishuv in 1947-48 with the aim of nipping the Jewish state in
the bud.
4. The Arabs were far stronger politically and militarily than
the Yishuv and were assisted by the British, but nonetheless
lost the war.
5. In the course of the war, in order to facilitate the invasion of
the Arab armies, the Arab leaders called upon/ordered
Palestine's Arabs to quit their homes, this would lay the
Jewish state open to charges of expulsion and physically clear
the path for the Arab armies. Thus was born the Palestinian
refugee problem (Morris 1990a: 4-5).
5. As White lam has shown, biblical specialists, historians and archaeologists
had long ensured that Palestinian history would not enjoy a place in Western aca-
demic discourse (1996: passim).
He might have added that the fabricated history claims that the land
was empty (of significant people) and much neglected; that it was
redeemed by Jewish labour, which made the desert bloom; that it
never damaged, and indeed benefited the natives; that the Zionists
acted alone, without the assistance of interested imperial powers; that
the few unsavoury actions in 1947-48 were the result of the stresses
of war; and that all its wars and invasions, and its actions against the
Palestinians were purely defensive, and so forth.
That fabricated history, consistently taught to Israeli children, has
shaped the minds of Israeli and diaspora Jews, and has moulded the
perceptions of governments and much of the international community.
It has taken some time for these foundational myths to be challenged.
Simha Flapan considered seven foundational myths that have com-
bined to mask the indisputable facts of history (1987). Avi Shlaim
showed how the original goal of Zionism was the establishment of a
Jewish state in the whole of Palestine, and that the acceptance of parti-
tion, in the mid-1930s as much as in 1947, was tactical, rather than a
dilution of the Zionist dream: 'I don't regard a state in part of
Palestine as the final aim of Zionism, but as a means towards that aim'
(Ben-Gurion in 1938, in Teveth 1985: 188), a sentiment he made clear
in a number of statements (see Morris 1988: 24; Shlaim 1988: 17). It
is important to review the nationalist mythology.
Attitudes to the Indigenous Population
The determination of the Basle Congress in 1897-when the popula-
tion of Palestine was 95 per cent Arab, and 99 per cent of the land
was Arab-owned (Khalidi 1992: 17)-to establish a state for Jews in
Palestine, without any regard for the indigenous population, marked
the beginning of the Palestinian tragedy. Characteristic of the period,
the intentions of the colonizers overrode every other consideration:
Herzl's Der Judenstaat ignored the needs and rights of the indigenous
people, and much of the Zionist public discourse proceeded as if
Palestine were a terra nullius, or a land at the free disposal of the
international community. Indeed, it was suggested that the project
would be a bonus for everyone, including the surrounding states. But
as early as November 1882, armed struggle was envisioned by at least
some Jews. One of the Biluim wrote from Palestine:
The final purposes ... are to take possession in due course of Palestine and
to restore the Jews ... [to] political independence ... It will be necessary to
teach the young and the future generations the use of arms ... The Jews, if
necessary with arms in their hands, will publicly proclaim themselves
masters of their own, ancient fatherland (quoted in Lehn 1988: 10).
In a series of letters and essays, the Ukrainian writer, Asher Zvi
Ginzberg (Ahad Ha' am, 1856-1927)-who was present at the First
Zionist Congress, but was disappointed with the Zionist programme,
which strove to save the Jewish body but not its soul (Simon 1962:
39)-argued that it was neither realistic nor honest fof Zionist leaders
to envisage the establishment of a Jewish state. They should seek
rather a Jewish settlement in Palestine, which could not be established
without harmonious relations with the indigenous population, but
would serve the cultural, spiritual and national needs of all Jews
everywhere. In his Emet Meeretz-Yisrael (The Truth from Palestine),
published in 1891 after his three-month stay in Palestine, he indicated
the obstacles to large-scale Jewish colonization: the unavailability of
large tracts of untilled but arable land and the attitudes of the
Ottomans, who were opposed to large-scale immigration in Palestine.
He emphasized that the indigenous Arabs showed no inclination to
leave. In November 1913, he wrote to a settler in Palestine :
I cannot put up with the idea that our brethren are morally capable of
behaving in such a way to humans of another people, and unwittingly the
thought comes to my mind: if it is so now, what will be our relation to the
others if in truth we shall achieve at the end of time power in Palestine?
And if this be the 'Messiah': I do not wish to see his coming (Ahad
Ha'am in Lehn 1988: 13).
One detects already in Herzl the duplicity which was to become char-
acteristic of Zionist discourse, producing 'a not-undeserved reputation
in the world for chronic mendacity' (Sykes 1965: 26), both with
respect to true Zionist intentions and the distortion of what was done
in their execution, as we shall see. After Herzl' s death in 1904, his
private diaries were held by the Zionist movement, and until 1960
only edited versions were released in English. The earlier versions
suppressed his plans (12 June 1895) to 'try to spirit the penniless
population across the border, etc.' (Herzl 1960, 1: 88). Nevertheless,
in a letter of 19 March 1899 to a concerned Jerusalem Arab, he
exclaimed, 'But who would think of sending them [the non-Jewish
population of Palestine] away? It is their well-being, their individual
wealth, which we will increase by bringing in our own' (in Childers
1987: 167).
Herzl acknowledged that, reluctantly, the native population would
have to be used for labour, especially when fever attacked the work-
ers, a fate from which he wished to protect the Zionists.
The modern, secular Jewish state of Herzl's novel Altneuland
(1902), writing of 1923 and for European consumption, was a haven
of the liberal spirit and a blessing for the natives. To the visiting
Christian, Mr Kingscourt, who had asked, 'Don't you look upon the
Jews as intruders?' the Palestinian Rashid Bey, replied, 'The Jews have
enriched us, why should we be angry with them. They live with us
like brothers. Why should we not love them?' But in the same 1902,
Herzl's general disdain of natives was obvious from his response to
Chamberlain's protest that Britain could not support the Zionist
proposal for a joint Anglo-Zionist partnership, since it was against
the will of the indigenous population of Cyprus (Herzl' s diary of
23 October 1902). Earlier in the entry for the same day, we read:
'Not everything in politics is disclosed to the public-but only results
of what can be serviceable in a controversy.'
Similarly, while Ben-Gurion, Yosef Weitz and other Zionist leaders
advocated 'transfer', they usually expressed their views in closed
Zionist circles, and deleted these references in published protocols:
Ben-Gurion ... preached behind the closed doors of the Zionist Congress
in 1937 the virtues of transferring Palestine's Arabs ... but in the printed
text of his speech solemnly expatiates on creating 'one law for the for-
eigner and the citizen in a just regime based on brotherly love and true
equality ... that will be a shining example for the world in treating minori-
ties' (Benny Morris, 'How the Zionist Documents Were Doctored',
Ha'aretz, 4 February 1994; see also Morris 1995).
Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion's biographer, acknowledges the disjunc-
ture between Ben-Gurion's public protestations and private aspirations:
A careful comparison of Ben-Gurion's public and private positions leads
inexorably to the conclusion that this twenty-year denial of the conflict
was a calculated tactic, born of pragmatism rather than profundity of con-
viction. The idea that Jews and Arabs could reconcile their differ-
ences ... was a delaying tactic. Once the Yishuv had gained strength, Ben-
Gurion abandoned it. This belief in a compromise solution ... was also a
tactic, designed to win continued British support for Zionism (Teveth
1985: 198-99).
Moreover, as Lehn shows convincingly, despite its claims that no
Arabs were evicted or disadvantaged by Jewish purchase of land, the
190
JNF insisted that the Arab tenants working on land which the JNF
wished to purchase would be removed by the vendors as a condition
for the sale (Lehn 1988: 55-57). The future Zionist leaders, schooled
in the Herzlia Gymnasia in Palestine, had it drummed into their young
hearts that 'the fatherland must become ours, goyim rein' (Menuhin
1969: 52).
The Myth of No Expulsions
The birth of the Jewish state caused the dispossession of some three-
quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs, whether acknowledged to be
intended by the Zionists or not. The myths of the benevolent and
peaceful intentions of Zionism has been unmasked comprehensively by
Masalha's study (1992), which reveals that the 'transfer' of the Arab
population was supported by the whole pantheon of Zionist ideologues
from the beginning, albeit in secret (see also Morris 1995). Moreover,
the disjuncture between what actually happened and what the official
Israeli records promulgated is striking. The official Israeli Govern-
ment pamphlet on the refugee question, first published in 1953, states
that the Palestinian Arabs were induced or incited to run away by
express instructions broadcast by the President of the Arab Higher
Executive (the Mufti) and surrounding Arab states. The charge has
become a standard component of the Israeli myth of origins, despite
the absence of corroborating evidence, and the presence of abundant
proof to dispel it.
Even the report of the intelligence branch of the Israel Defence
Force (IDF), 'Emigration of the Arabs of Palestine in the Period
1.12.1947-1.6.1948', ascribes the flight of 72 per cent of the
Palestinian refugees (some 391,000 people in all during that critical
period) to Israeli military force. Not only is there no mention of Arab
broadcasts encouraging the temporary exodus of the Arabs, but the
report stresses that the exodus of Palestinians was contrary to the
desires of the Arab Higher Committee and the neighbouring Arab
states: Arab broadcasts encouraged the population to stay put, issuing
threats to stave off the exodus (see Hitchens 1988: 75). The myth is
repeated to this day, despite the fact that already in London's
Spectator of 12 May 1961, Erskine Childers revealed that in 1958, as
a guest of the Israeli Foreign Office, he had requested to see the pri-
mary evidence for the charge that the Palestinians had been urged to
flee by the Arab leadership. Despite claims of 'a mountain of
evidence' and a 'wealth of evidence' no evidence, though promised,
was produced then, or since.
The evidence customarily offered is a recourse of desperation. The
allegation of an 'announcement made over the air' by the Arab Higher
Committee to account for the flight of Arabs in the Deir Y as sin
'incident' emanated from a Cyprus-based correspondent, who depen-
ded on an uncorroborated Israeli source. The contention that the
Greek-Catholic Archbishop of Galilee had urged his flock to leave has
been denied categorically by the Archbishop himself. Childers decided
to check the substantial claim through the BBC, which had monitored
all Middle East broadcasts throughout 1948, and a corroborating
American monitoring unit. He found that
There was not a single order, or appeal, or suggestion about evacuation
from Palestine from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine, in
1948. There is repeated monitored record of Arab appeals, even flat
orders, to the civilians of Palestine to stay put (in Hitchens 1988: 77).
Moreover, the evidence for systematic Yishuv 'horror recordings' and
'psychological blitz' to clear the area of Arabs is abundant (see
Childers 1987: 183-202).
Yitzhak Rabin, who presided over some of the most ruthless expul-
sions of the 1948 war, sought to perpetuate the myth that the expul-
sion of the Palestinians was brought about by Haj Amin Husseini' s
alleged call to the Arabs to leave in view of the forthcoming invasion
by the Arab states (Finkelstein 1995: 195 n. 55). On 12 July 1948,
after the slaughter of more than 250 Arabs in Lydda, Lieutenant-
Colonel Rabin, head of operations, issued the order: 'The inhabitants
of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age ... Yiftah
(Brigade HQ) must determine the method.'
6
A participant in the 'death
march' from Lydda recalls, 'I cannot forget three horror-filled days
in July of 1948. The pain sears my memory, and I cannot rid myself
of it no matter how hard I try' (Rantisi 1990: 23). Nevertheless,
Israeli historians during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s insisted that the
inhabitants had violated the terms of surrender and 'were happy at the
possibility given them of evacuating' (Morris 1990a: 2-3). Although
Rabin's own acknowledgment that what happened in Lydda and Ramie
had been 'expulsions' was excised from his text by Israeli Government
6. A similar order was issued for the expulsion of the inhabitants of neighbour-
ingRamle.
censors, to his embarrassment the New York Times later published
the offending passage (23 October 1979, Kidron 1988: 90-94).
Shapira devotes less than two pages to 'population transfer', and
justifies it in terms of the 'positive experience' between Turkey and
Greece, etc. without attending to the brutality such an enterprise
inevitably involves (1992: 285-86). Even the revisionist Benny Morris
confesses that, if pressed to evaluate morally the Yishuv' s policies and
behaviour in 1948, he would be loath to condemn, and opines that
'any sane, pragmatic leader' would have done the same (Morris
1990b: 20-21). However, as Norman Finkelstein notes, a 'sane, prag-
matic leader' is not necessarily a moral one (1995: 187 n. 8).
Israel's real, but publicly undeclared intentions are confirmed by
ongoing Israeli insistence on not allowing the Palestinians to come
back to their own houses and lands up to the present day. Whether
they left 'under orders, or pressure' or not, justice and international
law demand that their right to return on the cessation of hostilities be
honoured.
7
That Ben-Gurion's ultimate intention was to evacuate as
many Arabs as possible from the Jewish state can be deduced from the
range of methods he employed: an economic war aimed at destroying
Arab transport, commerce and the supply of foods and raw materials
to the urban population; psychological warfare, ranging from
'friendly warnings' to intimidation and exploitation of panic caused by
underground terrorism; and the destruction of whole villages and the
eviction of their inhabitants by the army (Flapan 1987: 92). After the
1967 war, IDF troops along the Jordan river routinely shot civilians,
men, women and children trying to slip back home (see McDowall
1989: 302 n. 109).
The Myth of 'Self-Defence'
Similarly, the myth of 'self-defence' has been exposed. Shapira argues
that the Zionist movement never intended to resort to force, but was
only driven to it by an accumulation of circumstances. She makes no
ethical distinction between the Zionist aim to transform Palestine into
a Jewish state and the indigenous Palestinians' determination to resist
it (Shapira 1992: 107-25). The conflict, then, was a clash of two
7. 'Israelis like to argue whether the Arabs escaped voluntarily or were expelled
by us. As if this made any difference. We could always have let them return after
the war' ('The 1948 Refugees Are the Original Sin of Israeli Society', Haaretz,
5 December 1993).
rights, more or less equal, a perspective which dilutes somewhat
mainstream Zionist historiography with its assumption that the Zionist
claim is stronger, if not absolute.
The appeal to a 'defensive ethos' was a public relations device, as
well as an exercise in conscious self-deception. It assuaged both world
opinion and the consciences of would-be immigrants and labour
Zionists, who in principle were opposed to colonialism. However,
from the beginning it was clear that Zionism was a conquest move-
ment, whether, reflecting changing circumstances, through peaceful
settlement or violence. No segment of the Arab population in Palestine
would agree to assuming an inferior status to the Jews in their own
land, and, a fortiori, to any arrangement that required them to aban-
don it. Recourse to arms sooner or later was inevitable, and was
widely recognized from the beginning, whether by the minority revi-
sionist Jabotinsky (author of Homo homini lupus-see Avineri 1981:
163-64) or the mainstream labour Zionist, Ben-Gurion (see
Finkelstein 1995: 110).
The Myth of 'Purity of Arms'
This myth also has had to be abandoned in the face of the evidence. By
1948 the metamorphosis of the stereotypical Jew to becoming one
capable of committing atrocities was unmasked. The former director
of the Israel army archives, and other Israeli sources, confirm that
in almost every Arab village occupied by Jews during the War of
Independence, war crimes, such as murders, massacres and rapes were
committed (see Finkelstein 1995: 110-12).
Zionism succumbed to the predictable paternalistic attitude of con-
querors, branding the indigenous population with the stereotypical
appellations reserved for 'inferior' colonized people (see Finkelstein
1995: 110-12). The socialism embraced by the Yishuv Labour leader-
ship was that of Stalinist Russia, which legitimated the use of terror,
the killing of the aged, women and children, the execution of sus-
pected Jewish collaborators, the extortion of funds and acts of rob-
bery, etc., during the Arab Revolt of 1936-39 (Shapira 1992: 247-49,
350), with the socialist end justifying the means.
Israeli war crimes did not end with the war of 1948-49. Rokach's
Israel's Sacred Terrorism records the state terrorism against its neigh-
bours, including civilian targets, during the 1950s. In an act of
reprisal, 66 civilian men, women and children were deliberately
killed by troops in the West Bank village of Qibua on 14 October
1953, when their homes were demolished over their heads. While
officially denied by the Israeli Government at the time, it was later
proved to be the work of Unit 101, a special forces battalion of the
regular IDF, designed to carry out cross-border reprisal raids, and
under the command of Ariel Sharon, subsequently Israel's Defence
Minister, and Minister of Infrastructure in the Likud-led government
of 1996. Moreover, between 1949 and 1956 some 3000-5000
unarmed civilians were killed by the IDF without compunction
(McDowall1994: 35).
After his investigation of the IDF's behaviour, Benny Morris sug-
gested that it
... reflected a pervasive attitude among the Israeli public that Arab life was
cheap (or, alternatively, that only Jewish life was sacred) ... The overall
attitude, at least down to 1953, seemed to signal to the defence forces'
rank and file that killing, torturing, beating and raping Arab infiltrators
was, if not permitted, at least not particularly reprehensible and might well
go unpunished (Morris 1993: 166).
McDowall notes that, while sadistic racism exists in all armies, the
real issue is how vigorously senior commanders enforce discipline and
punish offenders (1994: 36). The IDF committed several atrocities
which were covered up and denied, for example, that of 49 civilians
in Kafr Qasim in October 1956 (McDowall 1989: 204), and of over
500 men in Khan Yunis and Rafah some days later (see Cossali and
Robson 1986: 17-18; Locke and Stewart 1985: 6). Reprisals in which
civilians were foreseeably the primary victims include the killing of
18 civilians in Samu (West Bank) in 1966, and air attacks on Irbid
(Jordan, 1968, 30 civilians killed), Abu Za'abel factory (Egypt, 1970,
70 civilians killed), Bahr al Baqr (Egypt, 46 civilians killed), and
Beirut (1981, over 200 civilians killed) (McDowall 1989: 302 n. 106).
The Israeli daily, M a' ariv (2 August 1995), exposed serious war
crimes committed in 1956 (the killing of some 140 Egyptian prisoners
of war, including 49 Egyptian workers, in cold blood) by the elite
paratroop unit 890, led by, and on the orders of Rafael Eitan, who
later became the IDF Chief of Staff and subsequently founded and led
the Tzomet Party. Israel's self-perception as morally superior in its
purity of arms was further rocked by the revelation of army veteran
and former Labour MK, Michael Ben-Zohar, that he had witnessed
the fatal stabbing of three Egyptian PoW s by two Israeli chefs during
the 1967 June War. Military historian and former MK, Meir Pa'il,
knew of many instances in which soldiers had killed PoWs or Arab
civilians. Prime Minister Rabin regretted that 'things have been said
so far. I won't add anything to this' (Jewish Chronicle, 18 August
1995, p. 1).
More recently, the racism inherent in Zionism reached unacceptable
levels in the ideology and practice of the late Meir Kahane. The slogan
'Death to the Arabs' was heard widely and appeared on Hebrew
graffiti, for example, on the wall of the Fifth Station on the Via
Dolorosa for a number of years. There was considerable concern for
the inroads of racism into Israeli culture, with soldiers who, exposed
to the history of the Shoah, were planning all sorts of ways to exter-
minate Arabs: 'Too many soldiers were deducing that the Holocaust
justifies every kind of disgraceful action' (IDF Education Corps
officer, Col. Ehud Praver, in Segev 1993: 407).
Both within Israel and outside comparisons were made between the
Israeli army and the Nazis.
8
The well-known songwriter, Dan
Almagor wrote, 'We had better start preparing ourselves and the glass
booths in which we will sit when they judge us for what we did to the
Palestinian people' ('I Regret', in Yerushalaim, Yediot Aharonot,
16 December 1988, p. 23, quoted in Segev 1993: 410).
Avraham Shapira's The Seventh Day (1970), an oral history of the
June 1967 war, based on interviews with soldiers, highlights the atti-
tudes of the soldiers for whom the moral problematic was not what
the war did to the victims, but what it did to the Israeli soldiers. The
Israeli soldier was the war's salient victim, and the one deserving of
pity. Such exercises in self-extenuation and self-exculpation prevent
the perpetrators from recognizing themselves as murderers, and settle
for presenting themselves as tragic figures and objects of pity. Such
8. Yeshayahu Leibowitz introduced the term Judeo-Nazis in protest against the
Israeli attack on Lebanon, and in some circles the term Asken-Nazis was being
hurled as a sign of ethnic tension. The Moledet Party was described as neo-Nazi.
After a Tel Aviv judge sentenced a Jewish citizen to six months of public service for
killing an Arab boy, Professor Zeev Sternhell, a Hebrew University expert on the
history of fascism stated, 'The end came to German democracy not on the day the
Nazi militias killed their first leftist demonstrator but when a Nazi was sentenced to
three months in prison for the same offence for which a Communist was sentenced to
three years' ('Banai, Struzman, Farago', Hadashot, 2 June 1986, quoted in Segev
1993: 410).
self-righteous and sanctimonious piety substitutes sentimental self-pity
for genuine moral concern for the suffering which the self has
inflicted on the other, all in the name of public duty (see Finkelstein
1995: 114-20).
9
Adjudicating between Conflicting Rights
From the beginning of the modern Jewish settlement in Palestine, Jews
had to experience some unease on being confronted by the reality that
their coming to Palestine with Zionist zeal immediately established
conflict with the indigenous Arab population: 'I feel that someone
lived in this house before we came' (Y. Geffen, M a' ariv, 11 August
1972, in Kimmerling 1983: 183). If convinced of his own claims to be
there the Jew had to contend with the Palestinian counterclaim.
There were six major tendencies among Zionist groups on how to
deal with the indigenous Arab community: as relatives, natives,
Gentiles, Canaanites, as an oppressed class, and, finally, seeing the
Arabs and Jews as two national movements (see Kimmerling 1983:
184-89). Seeing the Arabs as relatives, fellow Semites who resembled
the forefathers of Jews, made them worthy of respect in the view of
many of the early settlers. Viewing them as natives, which though
seldom acknowledged in public became one of the most widely shared
perceptions among Jews, led to the realization that Zionism could be
achieved only by force. the Arabs as Canaanites, and the
Zionists as descendants of the biblical children of Israel imported into
the discourse the biblical mandate to take over the land and to purify
it of its idolatrous practices. Weighed against the divinely-given right
of the colonizers, the rights of the local population had no validity.
Views of this kind were accentuated in the wake of the 1967 War and
the rise of Gush Emunim, with its policy to flood the Occupied Terri-
tories with so many Jews that Arab autonomy therein would never be
possib_!9
-- Kimmer ling's suggestion that the estimation of the early Zionist
settlers that the Palestinian Arabs were an oppressed class who were in
the shackles of the feudal, exploitative pre-capitalistic regimes does
not square with the policies of the JNF. Those who saw the growth
of an Arab national movement as a challenge to the Jewish one
9. Invariably, when I question an Israeli soldier about his behaviour, and ask
whether he experiences any moral perturbation about his activities, I get the answer,
'I am only doing my duty.'
determined to abort it as soon as possible. On the other hand, those
who saw it as inevitable proposed various patterns of territorial divi-
sion, and division of political authority (see Kimmerling 1983: 184-89).
While it is instructive to discuss such Zionist ideologies, because of
the typical disjuncture between the public ideology of Zionism and its
practice, it is more relevant to evaluate what actually happened. If
Ben-Gurion' s claim in 1928 that,
According to my ethical beliefs, we do not have the right to deprive even a
single Arab child, even if by means of that deprivation we will achieve our
goal. Our work cannot be built upon the deprivation of even a single
person's rights.
reflected his real views, his actions later witness to an accelerated
moral collapse. It is more likely that they were only the public part of
the double discourse of Zionism, which hid the sordid elements of its
programme from public discussion. Jabotinsky, in any case, attributed
such sensibilities to 'only those with crippled spirits, with a diaspora
psychosis' (in Kimmerling 1983: 189).
The argument from the compelling need of Jews to settle in a
Jewish state does not constitute a right to displace an indigenous popu-
lation. And, whether intended from the start or not, the moral prob-
lematic arises most acutely precisely from the fact that Zionism has
wreaked havoc on the indigenous population, and not a little inconve-
nience on several surrounding states.
rThe 'historical right' is considered to be so obvious as to require no
demonstration. T o ~ a y s Jews, from anywhere on earth are widely
presumed to be the descendants of the ancient people of Israel, while
the' Palestinian Arabs are mterlopers .. I-Iistorically, however, the
Palestinian Arabs are likely to have been descendants of the inhabi-
tants of the region wh the biblical narrative, the chil-
dren o srae settled there towards the end of the Bronze Age.
Palestine, at least since that time, has been multi-cultural and multi-
ethnic. We know that some Palestinian Jews became Christians, and
that some of them in tum became Muslims. Ironically, many of the
forebears of Palestinian Arab refugees may well have been Jewish.
The appeal to Jewish forebears who were buried there, and Jewish
blood which had fertilized the land, etc. are of the order of the Nazi
justification of their conquest of the East on the basis of it having been
inhabited by Germans in primeval times, and that it had been fertil-
ized by the most noble ancient German blood. Finkelstein argues that
Zionism's 'historical right' was neither historical nor a right: not his-
torical because it denied 2000 years of non-Jewish habitation of
Palestine, and 2000 years of Jewish habitation elsewhere, and not a
right, except in terms of the Romantic mysticism of blood and soil
(1995: 101).
The 'Right to Return'
This is among the major claims to justify the establishment of the
Jewish state in Palestine. The Law of Return permits any Jew in the
world to settle in Israel. However, in the wider world, the right of
return operates only when an appropriately defined community has
been subjected to recent expulsion. Such an understanding is a sine qua
non of orderly international behaviour. In order to establish a right to
return, all the Jews of the world, from Siberia to Johannesburg,
would have to constitute a clearly defined community which could
demonstrate its collective recent expulsion from its territory. But
there never was a definable, single Jewish community which was
exiled at one time, or over a definite period, and which awaited its
opportunity to return. In the course of history, many Jews emigrated
from Palestine, by no means all by forcible exile.
The moral case for return is undermined by the time-span between
the act of expulsion and the determination to resettle. A right to
return dissolves into desuetude as the time-span between expulsion and
the determination to re-settle or reclaim the homeland exceeds reason-
able limits. If there were no time limits on the right to return, inter-
national order would collapse. To concede the legitimacy of a Jewish
Law of Return would open the floodgates for bizarre returns to ances-
tral homes at the expense of people in place for thousands of years.
In customary international law, no group has a right to conquer and
annex the territory of another people and expel its population.
Moreover, a people's return to the land from which it has been
expelled is a right under customary international law. This right has a
universally valid moral quality, and obtains for all peoples which
experience expulsion. The exiled Palestinians constitute a quintessen-
tial example of a people with a right to return, since, in 1948, a
clearly identified population was expelled by their Zionist conquerors,
and has never renounced its rights-many still possess their title deeds
to land, and even the keys of their homes. Diaspora Jews could never
have a right to immigrate into Palestine unless these Palestinians
surrendered to them their right to return. Moreover, Jewish claims of
a right to return have no measure of justice and morality, and rely
only on legislation which lacks moral coherence, and which receives
its force exclusively from conscienceless power. While conquest and
war are effective agents of annexation, they are not instruments of
legitimacy in the modern world.
Appeal to the needs of Jews runs the risk of elevating the perceived
needs of Zionist Jews to an imperative that does not have to contend
with the demands, needs or rights of any other people or national
community. In such a unique discourse, Zionism defines universal
morality exclusively in its own terms. In reality, Zionism cannot deal
comfortably with moral discourse. The establishment of the State of
Israel itself was possible only on the basis of land expropriation and
massive expulsion. No amount of legal acrobatics could ever justify its
behaviour towards the indigenous population. From that point on, the
exercise of legal power could only consolidate and amplify the foun-
dational immorality. The advancement of the Zionist dream could
only corrupt the normal discourse of jurisprudence, which, instead of
being an instrument of morality, would merely compound the original
cnme.
The Shoah and Jewish Nationalism
The organized transfer of Jews from villages, towns and cities all over
Europe to Nazi concentration camps resulted in the murder of at least
six million Jews (Gilbert 1982: 244-45).
10
Only some 1.6 million Jews
who were in Europe in September 1939 survived until May 1945, and
of these some 300,0000 endured the concentration camps (Gilbert
1982: 242-43). Frequently, the Shoah alone is presented as a justifica-
tion for the establishment of a Jewish state (e.g., W. Davies 1991:
120). Moreover, in some quarters Arab opposition to the establish-
ment of the state was considered to be continuing the Nazi genocide
(e.g. Manes Sperber's Than a Tear in the Sea, 1967: xiii), a sentiment
which Emil Fackenheim quotes, apparently with approval (1987:
400). The Shoah argument is critical in Israel. Appeal to it does not
draw on the Jewish attachment to the land of Israel, but rather that
10. At the outbreak of World War II there were almost 17 million Jews, of whom
8 million lived in Eastern Europe and some 5 million in the Americas. The Jewish
population in Eastern Europe was the largest increasing one, and was also responsi-
ble for the increase in numbers elsewhere (Halpern 1969: 6-7).
(a) the Shoah is an unique event in history, in that what happened to
the Jews never happened to anyone else;
11
(b) not only did the Gentiles
not aid the Jews, but they assisted in their mass murder-hence, Jews
cannot ever rely on the goyim for protection; (c) a Jewish nation state
is the only protection against another holocaust.
12
One of the features
of the Shoah as an apologia for the establishment of a Jewish state is
that no attention is paid to the cost to the Palestinians. Indeed, since all
the goyim are potentially anti-Semites, and even potential murderers
of Jews, it might be necessary to cleanse Palestine ethnically and expel
the enemies within the gate.
The 'Holocaust Theology' of Elie Wiesel, Emil Fackenheim and
Rabbi Irving Greenberg and others posits the perceived needs of Jews
as constituting a moral absolute, without any reference to the legiti-
mate needs of the Palestinian people, who function only in terms of
their perceived threat to the survival of the Jewish people. Its absorp-
tion in 'what is good for the Jews' precludes a critical history of
Zionism or of Israeli state policy. In failing to deal meaningfully with
the fact that Israel's success has been brought about by the humiliation
of another people, Holocaust theology eludes the moral imperative of
confronting the realities of the formation of the Jewish state and its
policies since 1948. The plight of the Palestinian people undermines
the force of Holocaust theology, with its portrayal of an innocent, suf-
fering people in search of security and freedom.
13
The Myth of the Unique Historical Claim
The status of the land of Israel in religious Jewish thought derives
from the covenant between God and his people. But one must caution
against the assumption that diaspora attachment to the land is virtually
11. Fackenheim discusses whether the Holocaust was unique, or only unprece-
dented, and concludes that it was both (1987: 400).
12. The Masada myth was fabricated as a glorious example of Jewish heroism
which would bolster the spirit of the 'Never Again' defiance. Nachman Ben-Yehuda
has shown how the mythical narrative was consciously invented, fabricated and sup-
ported by key entrepreneurs and organizations in the Yishuv. It was constructed as a
central national symbol of heroism for the new secular Zionist culture during the
period of nation building since the 1920s and since the establishment of the state after
1948 (1995: 307-309).
13. Moreover, the tragedy of the Shoah is employed to serve overt political inten-
tions: see Beit-Hallahmi 1987: ix-x; Phillip Lopate and Avishai Margalit, in Ellis
1990: 196 n 2; 34.
equivalent to the intentions implied in political Zionism. Many assume
that the implementation of the goals of political Zionism was the
fulfilment of the ideals of world-wide Jewry from the earliest times to
today. According to this reading of events, all Jews had been forcibly
dispersed at one time, and Zionism had brought them back. Historical
realities, however, do not support such an analysis.
Certainly there were forced expulsions.
14
However, it was never
easy to reconcile the view that exile was the punishment for sin with
the reality that many Jews remained in Babylon after the return to
Zion in 538 BC, and with the existence of a widespread Jewish dias-
pora in the Hellenistic period. It was held in antiquity that the 'ten
tribes' had never returned from exile in Babylon (e.g. Josephus, Ant.
11.5.2 (133); 4 Ezra 13.39-47; m. Sanh. 10.3.5). Even the return of
the tribes of Judah and Benjamin is unlikely to have been total.
Documents from the Persian period show clearly that Jews remained
on in Babylon (see, e.g., Bickerman 1984).
Voluntary emigration of Jews from Palestine into the areas border-
ing on Palestine and into the cities of the so-called civilized world was
widespread in the Hellenistic-Roman period. Part of Alexander's plans
to extend Hellenistic culture was to encourage the foundation of new
cities and new people to settle in them. Such settlers were granted
various privileges and even citizenship. Jews answered the call in
considerable numbers, going to Syria and Egypt, especially Antioch
and Alexandria, and to other newly-founded Hellenistic cities. Jewish
voluntary emigration extended to Mesopotamia, Media, Babylonia,
Dura-Europos, the Arabian Peninsula, Asia Minor, the North Coast of
the Black Sea, Cyrenaica, Africa, Macedonia and Greece, the Greek
Islands, the Balkans, Rome, Italy, and in the Christian period also to
Spain, Gaul and Germany. An abundance of evidence witnesses to a
widespread Jewish diaspora (1 Mace. 15.22-23; the Sib. Or. 3.271;
Strabo, according to Josephus, Ant. 14.7, 2 [115]; Josephus, Wars
2.16.4 (398); 7.3.3 (43); Philo, Flacc. 46 and Leg. Gai. 281-82; Acts
2.5-11; etc.). There were colonies of Jews throughout most of the
14. Hebrews were forcibly deported by the Assyrians (721 BC), the Babylonians
(586 BC), Artaxerxes Ochus (345-343 BC?), and Tigranes (83-69 BC). The Romans
carried off hundreds of prisoners of war to Rome after the conquest of Jerusalem by
Pompey in 63 BC (Schiirer 1986: 3-6). Deportation also followed the defeat of the
Jewish Rebellion (66-70 AD) and that of Bar Kochba (135 AD).
inhabited world, as known by people in the West. However acute the
theoretical question of whether religious Jews could live other than in
the land of Israel, the communities of Jews who settled throughout
Europe, North Africa and east of Palestine gave a pragmatic answer.
Whatever the degree of attachment to the homeland, there is no evi-
dence for a longing sufficiently vigorous to induce more than a hand-
ful of Jews to 'return' even when the circumstances in the diaspora
were difficult.
In the Deuterocanonical Old Testament and the Apocrypha (the
Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha), one finds some of the same attach-
ment to the land that one encounters in the Old Testament, although
notably less frequently _IS One finds also the promise that God would
restore his people to the land (Pss. Sol. 17 .26-28). In the end, God
will protect only those who live in Israel (2 Bar. 9.2), the land will
aid redemption (2 Bar. 1.1) and becomes 'holy' because God draws
near it (4 Ezra 9.7-9). Finally, it is in the pleasant land of Israel that
the throne of God will be erected (1 En. 90.20).
However, Halpern-Amaru has shown how the biblical traditions of
land were rewritten to reflect the historical contexts and contempo-
rary interests of the authors. In each of her four examples, she shows
how the author reconstructs the narrative, so that the land no longer
functions as the key signature of covenantal history, and develops new
narratives which de-emphasize the theological significance of land. In
Jubilees and The Testament of Moses the rewriting is eschatological,
while in Pseudo-Philo and Josephus's Antiquities it is historically ori-
ented. In each reworking of the tradition, the concept of Covenant is
reformulated so that some promise other than land assumes the pivotal
position (Halpern-Amaru 1994: 116-17).
16
15. The term holy land appears in a number of texts (e.g. Wis. 12.3; 2 Mace.
1.7; Sib. Or. 3.266-67). The land is good/beautiful (e.g. Tobit 14.4, 5; Jub. 13.2,
6), a pleasant and glorious land (e.g. 1 En. 89.40), extensive and beautiful (Ep.
Arist., line 107). It is the land of promise (e.g. Sir. 46.8; Jub. 12.22; 13.3; 22.27).
One notes other reflections of earlier biblical values: failure to observe the demands
of Yahweh is incompatible with occupation (Jub. 6.12-13); the circumcized will not
be rooted out of the land (Jub. 15.28), and the original Israelite conquest was due to
sins of the Canaanite inhabitants.
16. 'A meeting ground between theology and history, religion and politics, the
Land concept has been exaggerated, minimized, allegorized, idealized, rationalized,
and polemicized. In the expansionist era of the Hasmoneans the biblical Land
idea was formulated in geo-political terms. With the growth of large diaspora
In the Dead Sea Scrolls we detect the persistence of attitudes to the
land we find in the biblical books. It is in the land that the members of
the community practise truth and righteousness and maintain faithful-
ness (lQS 1.5; 8.3). Part of the task of the Qumran community was to
cleanse the land, which the Temple sacrificial system had sought in
vain to accomplish, in order to render it acceptable to God (1QS 9.3-
5). Sin leads God to hide his face from the land (CD 2.9-11), and
causes the land to be desolate (CD 4.10). In the final war, the sect, the
true Israelites, would occupy the land, and would fight a holy war
against the Gentile lands (1 QM 2).
After the devastation of the land in 70 AD, so many Jews were leav-
ing, especially for Syria, that the rabbis feared the land would be
depopulated, and began to extol its virtues. For the rabbis, the land
was simply ha 'aretz, and other lands were 'outside the land'. It
required only the application of a rigid reading of the biblical text to
recognize that an authentic Jewish life would be possible only in the
land of Israel, centred on the Temple in Jerusalem. Many of the
mitzvot could be observed only in the Land of Israel, for example, the
laws of sabbatical and jubilee years, the tithes and offerings to the
priests and the rituals dealing with the Temple. Only in such a king-
dom could it even be possible to live a fully Jewish life consistent with
the demands of the Torah. For that reason it could be said of a Jew
living among the goyim that 'he is like one who has no God' (b. Ket.
110b). When the Temple was destroyed, God could not be worshipped
adequately.
After the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt, movement from the land
increased. The Jewish sages faced a dilemma. On the one hand, they
had to try to prevent the total abandonment of the land, while on the
other they had to devise a modus vivendi with the diaspora which
would authenticate Jewish living outside the land. The rabbinic exalta-
tion of the land had its roots in the Old Testament (e.g. Lev. 19.23;
communities in the early rabbinic period, it became a spatial benchmark for the
development of Jewish law. And, displaced from its central position in Jewish
thought in the course of diaspora history, it was then transformed in idealized form
into a temporal symbol of redemptive hope. Nineteenth-century political Zionism
retranslated the concept into a signpost of cultural and political normality; and the
return to sovereign nationhood in the twentieth century provoked renewed efforts to
determine its religious significance. The interpretive encounter with the biblical
concept of Land has not ended' (Halpern-Amaru 1994 : 1-2).
23.10; 23.22; 25.2 and Deut. 26.1; Num. 35.9-10; Deut. 4.41-42;
19.1-2), and since so much of the Torah dealt with the land, it would
feature prominently even after dispersal. The sages repeated the bibli-
cal themes of the land of Israel and tended to idealize them. Constant
reference to the ritual patterns endowed the land of Israel with almost
mystical significance. It became an imagined place, and longing for it
took the form of that nostalgia for 'Paradise' that one finds in many
diaspora communities.
One-third of the Mishnah is connected with the land. Most of the
first division, Zeraim (Seeds), of the fifth division, Kodashim (Holy
Things), and of the sixth division, Toharoth (Purities) deal with laws
concerning the land, and there is much besides in the other parts.
Rabbi Simeon b. Yohai (140-165) said that the Holy One gave Israel
three precious gifts: The Torah, the land of Israel and the World to
Come (b. Ber. 5a). While 'the land of Israel is holier than all land',
the tenth degree of holiness is the sanctuary: 'The Holy of Holies is
still more holy' (m. Kel. 1.6-9). The degree of holiness of the land
derives from the extent of its association with the enactment of the
Law. A fundamentalist reading of the Torah legislation on land mat-
ters would suggest that Jewish sanctity was only fully possible in the
land, and that exile was an emaciated life (see Davies 1991: 26).
However, such attitudes to religion and morality reflect a failure to
adjust to radically changed circumstances.
While the rabbis prescribed the recitation of the Eighteen Benedic-
tions (the Tefillah, or Shemonei Esreh), which became a core element
of the Jewish liturgy, the emphasis was on the Temple rather than just
the land: 'Zion the abiding place of Thy glory, and towards Thy
temple and Thy habitation' (Benediction 14; see also 16, 18). This is
also the case in the Siddur Benediction 18. The prayers were to be
said facing Jerusalem, or at least orienting the heart towards the Holy
of Holies (m. Ber. 4.5).
The Jewish liturgy played a critical role in keeping alive the attach-
ment to the land. The annual Liturgy of Destruction, ending on the
ninth day of Ab (Tisha be-Av), is given over to fasting for the annual
commemoration of the devastation of the land, Jerusalem and its
Temple. On that day, the prayer begins, '0 Lord God, comfort the
mourners of Zion; Comfort those who grieve for Jerusalem', and ends
with, 'Praised are You, 0 Lord, who comforts Zion; Praised are You,
who rebuilds Jerusalem.' See also m. Ros Has. 4.1-3 for the centrality
of Jerusalem. That Jerusalem established the time for world-wide
celebration of the Jewish festivals, and that all synagogues faced
Jerusalem added to its importance.
The Tannaitic and Amoraic sages were wary of political attempts to
re-establish the kingdom of Israel on its own land. However, devoted
and intense religious concern for the land/Temple remained part of
the communal consciousness of Jews. The last revolt of Jews in the
Roman Empire in the hope of re-establishing a Jewish state occurred
after the anti-Jewish statutes of Emperor Justinian ( 483-565 AD).
Later, Nehemiah, a messianic figure, reigned in Jerusalem in the
period 614-17. With the Arab Conquest in 639, and the building of
the Mosque of Omar on the site of the temple (687-91), Jewish devo-
tion to the land was reflected in voluntary individual pilgrimages and
immigrations rather than in political activity for the establishment of a
state.
The Law demanded that every male should make pilgrimage to
Jerusalem at Passover, Feast of Weeks and Tabernacles (Exod. 23.14-
17; see Deut. 16.1-17). During the Second Temple period even dias-
pora Jews sought to observe the pilgrimage (e.g. m. Ta'an. 1.3). Philo
has left a record of his attachment to the Temple in Jerusalem, and
describes world-wide pilgrimage to it (Spec. Leg. 1, the MSS insert Of
the Temple 67-70). After the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD,
however, pilgrimage reflected the devotion of Jewish pilgrims to the
worship at the site of the Temple. Invariably such pilgrimages to the
Wailing Wall became occasions of lamentation.
The polarity of the relationship of diaspora Jews to the land is
reflected in two contrasting standpoints of the poet Jehuda Halevi
(c. 1075-1141) and the great post-Talmudic spiritual leader, Moses
Maimonides (1135-1204). In his Kuzari, Halevi showed how exile had
severed the links between the Torah, the people of Israel and the land
of Israel, which would be mended only with the coming of the
Messiah. He lamented his separation from Zion: 'My heart is in the
East, and I am at the edge of the West. . .it would be glorious to see the
dust of the ruined Shrine' (Libbi bemitzrach, in Carmi 1981: 347).
Invariably his lament is related to the devastation of the land and of
Jerusalem in particular (see his Zion poems, and in particular Sion,
halo tishali, which was included in the liturgy of Tisha be-Av, in
Carmi 1981: 347). The main strands of Hebrew thought affirmed the
centrality of the land, the city of Jerusalem and its Temple, and for
Halevi also, the land of Israel marked the threshold between the
human and the divine spheres.
Halevi considered that every Jew must make every effort to go to
the land of Israel to observe the commandments there. In several
poems he imagines his voyage. In 1141, at the age of 65, he left his
family in Spain and headed for the Levant (see his Hava mabbul, in
Carmi 1981: 352). Whether he visited Jerusalem or not we do not
know. We do know that his tomb in Lower Galilee was seen within
some 20 years of his death by Benjamin ben Jonah of Tudela, the first
mediaeval Jewish writer of whose travels we have a detailed record
(Adler 1894).
By contrast, for Maimonides, who followed the later prophetic and
halakhic sources, the land of Israel was of itself no different from
other lands. However, historically speaking, it was distinctive because
it was sanctified by the commandments and by events of Israelite his-
tory. Maimonides passed through the land of Israel on his way to
Egypt but lived his entire life in the diaspora. Similarly, Benjamin of
Tudela spent an extended period away from Spain, which he left in
1160, going as far as Syria, Palestine and Persia, and returning to
Spain in 1173. His account reflects his interest in what we might call
inquisitive journeying rather than in what religious people call
pilgrimage.
The fate of living in different parts of the Jewish diaspora assumed
dreadful proportions in several places during the period of the
Crusades. In an anonymous poem, 'Come with us', the smitten daugh-
ter of Zion is invited to join in the march to the Holy Land (Carmi
1981: 368-70). David bar Meshullam of Speyer called on God to
avenge the mass suicides in Speyer during the First Crusade (1096)
(Carmi 1981: 374-75), and the poems of Ephraim of Regensburg
(1110-75) reflect the horrors of the Regensburg massacre of 1137 and
of the Second Crusade (1146-47). Sefer Zekhira of Ephraim of Bonn
(1132-1200) records the decrees and persecutions of the Second and
Third Crusades, and his lament for the massacre of Jews at Blois
(1171) ends with the hope of being rescued and paying homage to God
in Jerusalem (Carmi 1981: 385). A feature of the poetry of lament in
this period is the presentation of massacres as a sacrificial ritual, the
offering of the unblemished and willing lamb.
Shalem Shabazi (d. after 1681 ), the foremost Y emini poet, reflects
on the messianic expectations of Jews, especially in the wake of the
persecutions of 1679-81: 'When will He give me leave to go up and
make home within the extolled gates of Zion? Morning and evening I
call to mind the Princess [the Shekinah]' (Carmi 1981: 487). And
again, 'My Beloved ... will assemble all my kind and righteous tribes,
and Israel will rise to greet the dawn in Zion's gates' (Carmi 1981:
488).
17
With regard to Jewish religious settlement in the land, Rabbi Moses
Ben Nahman (Ramban, 1194-1270), the highest religious authority of
his time in Spain, emigrated to Palestine in 1267 and was active in
founding yeshivot and synagogues in Acre and Jerusalem. In 1286,
Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg sought to lead a number of Jews from the
area of the Rhine to Palestine. In 1523, a messianic movement led by
David Reuveni aimed at a return to the land and attracted the interest
of communities in Egypt, Spain and Germany. In 1772-80, Rabbi
Nahman of Bratzlov journeyed to the land and judged that what he
had known before was insignificant, and that simply by direct contact
with the land 'he held the Law whole'. He achieved this merely by
stepping ashore at Haifa. He desired to return immediately, but under
pressure went to Tiberias, but never to Jerusalem. The Maharal of
Prague (Rabbi Yehuda Liwa of Loew-Ben Bezalel, 1515-1609) did
not urge the establishment of a state in Israel, leaving that to God, who
would come in his own good time (Lev. 26.44-45) (Davies 1991: 33).
Under the influence of Rabbi Elijah Ben Solomon Salman of Vilna
(the Vilna Gaon), a number of groups went to Safed in 1808 and 1809
and saw themselves as representatives of all Jews, and considered
themselves justified in appealing to other Jews for help. Some, such as
Rabbi Akiba Schlessinger of Pressburg (1837-1922), were driven to
go to the land, it being more and more difficult to live according to
the Torah in an increasingly secular Europe.
W. Davies identifies Jewish movements of escape from modernism
and secularism with the Zionist movement (1991: 34): Jews who had
abandoned their religious and national identities to become 'nor-
malized' in Western society subsequently became disillusioned and
returned to the tradition they had shed. However, to do so both in
religious and national terms was too much, and instead of returning
to religious roots, they turned to 'nationalism', socialism and
17. The extant poetry, of course, also reflects the themes of poets of all periods,
especially those dealing with the attraction of love (cf. the love poems of Immanuel
of Rome, c. 1261-c. 1332, the 'emperor of poets').
romanticism, regarding their religion as a fossilized survival. For
those nineteenth-century secular Jews who ultimately became Zionists,
'religious devotion to the land symbolized all that was particularistic,
"scandalous", and nonassimilable in Judaism' (Davies 1991: 35 n. 17).
Nevertheless, Davies postulates a certain consistency between the
religious longing for the land and Zionist nationalism.
Conclusion
Although the practice of settler colonialism is distinctive in each case,
we have seen that stereotypical attitudes to the indigenous people
obtain in the ideologies we have examined. Invariably for colonization
to take place, the colonizer had to be technically, materially and mili-
tarily more developed than the colonized. By the criteria of the colo-
nizer, these qualities conferred superiority, 'natural' or 'racial', and
justified 'the insatiable progress of our race'. The colonizers seldom
considered the impact of their enterprise on the indigenous popula-
tion, and either ignored it or knew what was best for the natives, and
arrogated to themselves the right to be overseers of their destiny,
whether in reservations, congregaciones, aldeias, Bantustans or Zones
A of the PNA.
18
In the Eurocentric version of world history, in which
'the World is discovered by Europeans', even the most problematic
achievements could be explained: 'The effect of the slave trade on
Africa was undoubtedly harmful. Yet the balance was not altogether
unfavourable. The Portuguese, for example, introduced a variety of
new fruit and vegetables' (Williams 1962: 41).
Consistent with the practice in virtually all nations and political
movements, the historiographers of Zionism and the State of Israel
fabricated a history along the lines discussed above. Having forged a
myth of a perennial Jewish longing to abandon the galut and establish
a Jews-only state in the ancestral homeland, they posited it as the norm
in every generation (the Myth of the Unique Historical Claim), even
18. In the nineteenth-century US also, the government adopted a policy of
'population transfer' of hundreds of thousands of Indians from their own land into
reservations. Such an act required no further justification than that provided by the
obvious superiority of the white man over the Indian. Moreover, any semblance of
moral culpability for the action was removed by naming the operation The Manifest
Destiny'. See Dee Brown's Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee (1981) and in particu-
lar p. 31 for an insight into 'Manifest Destiny'.
though such an aspiration did not appear in Jewish circles until the
rise of other nationalisms in nineteenth-century Europe. The aspira-
tion to establish a nation state in Palestine made no appearance in
Jewish history between the defeat of Bar Kochba's revolt in 135 AD
and the advent of nineteenth-century European nationalism. In fact,
Jewish longing for the land was akin to the longing for a lost paradise
of Temple ritual. In religious circles, the exceptional nationalistic
views of Rabbis Kalischer and Alkalai ran in the face of the Orthodox
establishment. Zionism depended on no religious sensitivities and was
consistently opposed by the religious establishment, and the major
Zionist ideologues despised religion. The rich diversity of pre-Zionist
Jewry should not be forged into an inevitable linear progression to
one agreed ideology, be it Zionism or some other. The fabricated
proto-Zionist myth of the pre-history of political Zionism not only
distorts the truth of history but perverts present-day Jews' perception
of themselves, their origins and their destiny.
The amassing of texts from different periods and places, reflecting a
certain alienation from the Holy Land and a discomfort in the dias-
pora, does not amount to evidence of a perennial and ubiquitous per-
secution of Jews (the Myth of Perpetual and Ubiquitous Alienation and
Persecution). As the survival of Jews shows, the peril was neither
everywhere nor at all times. There were golden ages in the diaspora,
as well as dark ones. Indeed in 1950-51, Ben-Gurion felt obliged to
sanction the bombing of synagogues and other Jewish buildings in
Baghdad to engineer the aliyah of Jews from Iraq-an immensely suc-
cessful campaign which drove some 105,000 Jews to flee the country
with no choice of destination other than Israel, leaving only some
4000 behind (Shiblak 1986: 127).
19
Diaspora longing for the land of Israel was invariably linked to
Temple worship. While many volumes of the literature of 'classical
19. Agents of the Israeli Government spread the fear of anti-Semitism into the
Iraqi Jews by blowing up synagogues (e.g. the Mas'uda Shemtob Synagogue on
14 January 1951), firms owned by Jews (May and June 1951) and other places fre-
quented by Jews, as well as the US Information Centre in Baghdad (March 1951), in
order to gain support for the Zionist cause in the US. The bombing campaign, carried
out with the personal knowledge of Yigal Allon and David Ben-Gurion, was sus-
tained over a period of time in order to ensure a mass exodus of Iraqi Jews to Israel:
'Every time fears would abate, a new bomb shattered the feeling of security, and the
prospect of staying on in Iraq seemed gloomier' (Shiblak 1986: 124).
Judaism' discuss the Temple and its animal sacrifices, there is little on
the town of Jerusalem. Moreover, it is the Temple and its sacrifices
which are constantly referred to in Jewish prayers. However, attach-
ment to the Temple rituals, the desire to rebuild the Temple and
restore its animal sacrifices must take account of realities. Ha 'aretz' s
Passover Eve supplement ('The Holy Butcher Shop', 14 April 1995)
shocked its readers with its description of how the Temple functioned
with animal sacrifices etc. The ritual of priests skinning and dividing
the animals, and the stench from the daily burning of hundreds of
sheep and bulls as sacrifices and so on would temper the nostalgia for
the earthly Jerusalem that is at the heart of diaspora longing.
Pilgrimage to Jerusalem also was motivated by attachment to the
site of the Temple. The exclamation, 'Next year in Jerusalem' was in
anticipation of a pilgrimage to the site of the Temple and not a proto-
Zionist aspiration to establish a colonial settlement. Spiritual and
emotional attachment to the land should not be confused with wishing
to live there, and less with the desire to control it politically, espe-
cially at the expense of the indigenes. Essentially, pilgrims visit a
place and return home.
Before the nineteenth century, there is little evidence that Jewish
longing could be assuaged by recourse to settler colonialism. In the
Bible itself, the land of Canaan is the Promised Land, 'the acquisition
of which involves a moral and religious problem and to the possession
of which a moral condition applies' (Schweid 1987: 535). Schweid's
moral and religious problem is solved, however, because it is a land
whose 'previous inhabitants lost their right to it because of their sins,
and the Israelite tribes will continue to reside in the land only if they
will be just' (1987: 535-36). It is not just to attribute such a cavalier
morality to generations of diaspora Jews who give no attestation to
such views.
In their determination to present an unblemished record of the
Zionist achievement, the historiographers of Zionism and the State of
Israel rewrote not only their history, but the documents upon which
such a history were based. Morris analyzes the disjunctures between
the handwritten diaries of Y osef Weitz and the sanitized published
version, and the clear evidence of extensive self-censoring in Ben-
Gurion's diaries. The propagandistic intent is evident, particularly
in removing references to the 'transfer' intentions of the Yishuv,
as reflected in the meetings between Weitz and Ben-Gurion. In his
sanitized version of the conquest of Arab villages, Ben-Gurion makes
no reference to massacres, rapes and expulsions, and presents the
massive looting of the towns and villages as the only 'moral
shortcoming' of Israeli behaviour (Morris 1995: 56-57).
Weitz also 'laundered' the diaries of Yosef Nahmani, removing all
reference to massacres in the 'stenographic' records of meetings, and
all citations of Nahmani's consistent criticism of the aggressiveness
and wanton cruelty of the Haganah, who, on orders from their com-
mand, refused to negotiate with the Arabs, who 'only want peace'
(Morris 1995: 54). Weitz omits any reference to Nahmani's dismay at
the behaviour of the Haganah in Tiberias in April 1948 ('Shame
covers my face and [I] would like to spit on the city and leave it'), and
to his horror at the rape of women and the massacre of 56 peasants in
Safsaf, after the town had raised a white flag, and the massacre of 67
men and women, also after surrender, in Saliha (p. 55). Nahmani had
asked in his diary, 'Where did they come by such a measure of cru-
elty, like Nazis?' but no such embarrassing records appear in Weitz's
extracts. All references to comparisons made by Jews between the
behaviour of IDF units in operations Hiram and Yoav and Nazi
behaviour in occupied Europe disappear from the official 'steno-
graphic' records (pp. 55, 59). Morris considers the fabricators of
propagandistic Zionist history to be among the most accomplished
practitioners of this strange craft of source-doctoring (1995: 44). The
aim was to hide things said and done and to bequeath to posterity only
a sanitized version of the past (the Myth of No Expulsions, and the
Myth of Purity of Arms).
One of the most significant effects of a pan-Zionist reading of
Jewish history is the reduction of the rich diversity of Jewish histori-
cal experience to one kind of ideological drive which emphasizes some
of the most ignoble and regressive elements of Jewish tradition,
namely those which glory in a separation from the nations and a
determination to carve out the destiny of a Jewish state irrespective of
the cost to others. These dispositions which derive from an ethnicist
and xenophobic nationalism and are premised on attitudes of racial
dominance and exclusion do not advance the goal of other traditions
within Judaism, such as that inviting the Jewish community to be a
light to the nations.
20
20. 'In this nuclear age, when the movement towards Christian unity and
This rewriting of Jewish history has gone hand in glove with the
myth which propels Zionism and catapults to the zenith of Jewish aspi-
rations a single phase of its history that is very recent, and one that in
all likelihood will not endure. It will not endure, in the same way that
tyrannies collapse eventually, usually under the weight of a combina-
tion of internal tensions which spring from ideological contradictions,
and external ones which will not tolerate or support such oppression
indefinitely.
21
Pre-Zionist Judaism deserves to be assessed on its own
terms, and the whole of Jewish history must not be allowed to be
dominated by the combined forces of nineteenth-century imperialist
and colonial-nationalist tendencies and the disaster inflicted on
European Jewry by the racist policies of the Third Reich.
Fundamentally, the Jewish claim to return rests with the Bible, since
there is no other convincing moral ground supporting it. What most
distinguishes the wholesale foundational plunder which Zionism per-
petrated on the indigenous Palestinians is the fact that it is generally
regarded favourably in the West, and in most theological and religious
circles is viewed as being no more than what the Jewish people
deserve in virtue of the promises of God outlined in the Bible. The
Bible is a sine qua non for the provision of alleged moral legitimacy,
and without it Zionism is a discourse in the conquest mode, as against
a moral one. The Bible read at face value provides not only a moral
supranational unity is sweeping the world, the Jews of the world, through
indoctrination with the regressive political Zionist philosophy, are being dragged
back ideologically into the old, dark east European ghettos, where self-segregation
and cultural isolation once reigned supreme' (Menuhin 1969: xiv).
21. The demographic factor alone bodes ill for the maintenance of a Jewish state.
Even with a negative migration balance (i.e. more leaving than returning) of 159,300
for the West Bank and 113,200 for the Gaza Strip for the period 1967-92, the popu-
lation growth rate in both areas, respectively 4.2 and 5.3 per cent, has yielded Arab
populations of 1.05 million in the West Bank, 155,500 in East Jerusalem and
716,800 in the Gaza Strip in 1992. Population increases of that order will ensure that
the Jewish majority in Mandated Palestine will soon be overturned. Ironically, the
relatively greater oppression of Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip over against that in East Jerusalem has added to the increasing birth rate (see
Sabella 1996). Moreover, the tension between the religious-ultra-nationalist coalition
and those espousing a Western-like democratic state is likely to increase, perhaps to
the point of civil war. Externally, Israel will never be secure unless it establishes
moderate relations with its Arab neighbours and makes some restitution to the
Palestinians for its colonialist plunder.
framework which transposes Jewish claims into a divinely sanctioned
legitimacy, but postulates the taking possession of the Promised Land
and the forcible expulsion of the indigenous population as the
fulfilment of a mitzvah. One could scarcely imagine that the Messianic
Age would open with colonial plunder.
Part III
COLONIALISM AND THE BIBLICAL EVIDENCE
Chapter 6
REINTERPRETING THE BIBLICAL EVIDENCE:
LITERARY AND HISTORICAL QUESTIONS
Because of the foundational significance of the biblical land traditions
in colonial enterprises, it is appropriate to re-examine these narra-
tives. Throughout the history of Christianity and Judaism, the
Synagogue reading of the Torah and the Church reading of the Old
Testament related the narratives to the period of the characters within
the story as though they were dealing with simple historical records of
the past, rather than to the time of composition several centuries later.
While the biblical narrative which has fuelled colonial enterprises is
considered in both Synagogue and Church to communicate basically
reliable historical information, the most recent critical scholarship on
the Pentateuch and the so-called deuteronomistic history is divided
between those who argue for a sixth-fourth-century B C time of
composition and those who contend that it was written in the third-
second century BC. There is, then, a major time lapse between the
alleged events and their narration, giving rise to questions of historic-
ity, literary form, authorial intention and interests. Sixth-fourth-
century BC literary accounts should not be presumed to reflect accu-
rately the social conditions of the 'Patriarchal period', nor of
fourteenth-tenth-century Palestine. Moreover, the biblical narrative
contains only one aspect of the wider picture.
1
The Patriarchal Narratives
The patriarchal stories of Genesis have great imaginative power, and
are deeply embedded in western culture. Moreover, the account of the
1. Philip Davies distinguishes between three Israels: biblical Israel (literary),
historical Israel (the real origins of the people) and 'ancient Israel' (what scholars
have constructed out of an amalgamation of the other two) (Davies 1995: ll ).
6. Reinterpreting the Biblical Evidence 217
promise of land to Abraham and his descendants is read as though it
were a record of what actually happened. While acknowledging the
text as powerful literature, the quest into what happened in the past is
critical for an assessment of the text and of its later appropriation.
Literary answers to questions of history are no better than historical
answers to questions of literary form.
The following picture emerges from a simple reading of the patri-
archal narratives. After Genesis 1-11 presents its perspective on the
origins of the universe, the world, its animals and human beings, the
focus changes from the many peoples of the earth to one. Abram is
brought on to the stage of human history (Gen. 11.28) and another
beginning is ushered in: 'I will make you a great nation' (Gen. 12.2).
The Covenant with Abraham involved leaving his own land and going
to the land of promise, the land of Canaan (v. 5). The Lord promises
to Abram and his heirs forever all the land that his eyes can see (Gen.
13.12-14), from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates (Gen. 15.1-18).
Hagar is to bear Ishmael (Gen. 16.10-12), but God will maintain his
covenant with Isaac rather than with Ishmael (Gen. 17.15-22). The
contract was renewed between God and Isaac (Gen. 26.2-4). Isaac's
son, Jacob, was to live in the place promised to Abraham (Gen. 28.1-
4), while the other son, Esau, was to live in Edom (Gen. 32.4), etc.
Genesis 11.27-50.26, then, deals with the origins of the Israelite
people, through its ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, down to the death
of Jacob and Joseph in Egypt. The remainder of the Pentateuch con-
centrates on the affairs of this one nation.
The Book of Genesis: Literary Critique
The colonialist appropriation of the Chosen People-Promised Land
paradigm reflects the widespread view that one is dealing with histori-
cal pericopae. Until recently, historians of Israel and Judah invariably
viewed the biblical text as providing a firm historical basis and con-
sidered their authors to reflect on past events and on their causal rela-
tionships (e.g. Orlinsky 1985: 45). In many respects they did little
more than provide a paraphrase of the biblical text, which they
adhered to with only thinly veiled apologetics and special pleading
(see Garbini 1988: 1-20).
However, several factors combine to suggest that the patriarchal
narratives are a literary fiction. Let us consider the historicity of the
Abraham cycle, since it is within that material that we encounter
God's original promise of land and progeny. The fact that the name
Abram is widely attested in Mari, Ebla, U garit, Egypt and Cyprus,
among others is little help in determining the historicity of the biblical
person (Ahlstrom 1993: 181). The Genesis narrative tells us that
Abraham and his clan came from Ur of the Cha1deans to Haran in
upper Mesopotamia and thence to Canaan (Gen. 11.31), abandoning a
sophisticated lifestyle for that of a semi-nomad, and possessing only
the cave of Macpelah in Hebron, which he purchased from a Hittite as
a burial place (Gen. 23). The promise of the land to Abram and his
descendants (Gen. 12.6-7) is repeated again and again (Gen. 13.14-17;
15.18-21; 17.5-8; cf. Gen. 26.3-4; 28.4, 13-15; 50.24), and recurs in
each of the other books of the Pentateuch (Exod. 2.24; 33.1, etc.; Lev.
26.42; Num. 32.11; Deut. 1.8, etc.).
Since the patriarchal narratives do not provide information which
can be dated by synchronization with a fixed chronology derived from
extra-biblical sources, one is left with attempting to date the events on
the basis of conformity between the lifestyle depicted in the narratives
and that portrayed in material from surrounding cultures. Scholars
have argued that the semi-nomadic lifestyle portrayed in Genesis
resembles that of the alleged migrations of 'Amorites', as reflected in
the archaeological evidence and in the documents from Mari, fixing
the patriarchs in the Middle Bronze I period (2000-1800 BC). Others
have placed them in the Late Bronze Age (1550-1200 BC) on the basis
of similarities with the social customs of the texts from Nuzi.
But several factors suggest a late dating for the Abraham narrative.
The designation Ur of the Chaldeans as the place from where Abram
and his family came (Gen. 11.31) is an anachronism: the Chaldeans do
not appear on the world scene before the ninth century BC,
2
and gave
their name to the region no earlier than the eighth or seventh century
BC. The phrase, Ur of the Chaldeans, does not occur again until Neh.
9.7, which could suggest that the Abraham narrative is much later
than the time suggested by the material of the narrative. Moreover,
Beer-sheba, which figures in Isaac's life, did not exist before the early
Iron Age. Likewise, whereas Abraham and Isaac are both said to have
had dealings with the Philistine king, Abimelech of Gerar (Gen. 20
and 26), the Philistines were not known in Palestine before 1200 BC.
2. The Akkadian term matkaldu occurs no earlier than the first half of the ninth
century BC (see Ahlstrom 1993: 30).
Again, the camel was not used as a beast of burden before the end of
the second millennium BC. Furthermore, the fictional nature of the
Abraham narrative in Genesis 14 is clear (Ahlstrom 1993: 184-86).
The presence of anachronistic elements within the narrative opens up
the question of its historicity, its literary character and of its period
and circumstances of composition.
Abraham, History and Tradition
Already in 1885 Julius Wellhausen had concluded that we have no
historical knowledge of the patriarchs, and that Abraham was more
likely a free invention of unconscious art rather than a historical
person. More recent scholarship has shown convincingly (pace
Goldingay 1983; Millard 1983) that the patriarchal narratives contain
no reliable evidence for the period depicted in the narrative, but are
literary fictions composed at a later period to address the context of
the day. In 1974, T. Thompson evaluated the major scholarly recon-
structions between 1920 and 1970 and challenged their efforts to
establish the historicity of the patriarchs on the basis of extra-biblical
resonances. He showed that the tradition of Abraham's journey from
Ur of the Chaldees to Canaan by way of Haran is unhistorical and is a
reconstruction based on several originally independent and conflicting
traditions, and that the biblical chronologies are not based on histori-
cal memory, but on a very late theological schema that presupposes a
very unhistorical world view. He dismissed as fundamentalist the
efforts to use the biblical narratives for a reconstruction of the history
of the Near East (1974: 315).
Thompson initiated a serious reinterpretation of our understanding
of second-millennium Palestine and of the Genesis narratives.
Independently, Van Seters's study showed that an early dating of the
allegedly corroborative extra-biblical material and the supposed anti-
quity of the patriarchal narratives were untenable (1975: 121). More-
over, he argued that the central Y ahwist tradition of the Pentateuch (J)
sprang from the exilic, or post-exilic periods, rather than from that of
the early monarchy. The fact that Abraham is referred to as an indi-
vidual only in the exilic texts (lsa. 51.2; Ezek. 33.24), and that, with
the exception of Josh. 12.3-4, 12, the pre-exilic parts of the Old
Testament make no mention of the incidents associated with Abraham,
Isaac or Jacob suggests that the stories used by the author of Genesis
may be no earlier than the period of the Babylonian exile (Whybray
1995: 49-50). The fabrication of a family history based on various
stories about legendary figures about whom the extant pre-exilic lit-
erature is vague constituted a 'national' tradition of a single family
which in four generations had branched out into the 'twelve tribes of
Israel'.
Most of the genres of biblical literature have their counterparts in
the literature of the Ancient Near East. However, we look in vain for
any analogue either in content, or even in form to the material in
Genesis 12-50, and to the accounts of the Exodus and the conquest of
the land. While we have evidence of cultures which trace their origins
back to the Late Bronze Age, and have analogues, particularly among
the Greeks and the Romans, of peoples tracing their origins back to a
legendary past, analogues of the Hebrew extended patriarchal narra-
tives do not exist outside of the Jewish and Greek world. Garbini sug-
gests that the Philistines, direct heirs of the Aegean and Anatolian
culture, were responsible for introducing this Greek genre into a
Hebrew setting (1988: 85-86).
The role of ancestors in the foundation of Greek cities resembles
aspects of the patriarchal traditions. Weinfeld focuses on the Aeneas-
Abraham analogy (1993: 1-21). Garbini suggests that the Israelites
had Abraham born in Mesopotamia in the same way as the Romans
traced themselves to the Trojan hero Aeneas (1988: 80). In both cases,
the pattern is established in stages: a man leaves a great civilization
and is charged with a universal mission; there is a gap between the
migration of the ancestor and the actual foundation, etc.:
Father Aeneas (Aen. 2.2) leaves famous
Troy with his wife, his father and his
son,
and stays for a while in Carthage (which
later becomes Rome's great enemy).
His son, Ascanius reaches Lavinium
(Aen. 1.267-69) and Alba-Longa.
Father Abraham (lsa. 51.2) leaves Ur
of the Chaldaeans with his wife and
father (Gen. 11.28-31; 15.7; Neh. 9.7),
stays for a while in Aram (which later
becomes Israel's enemy)
and reaches Canaan, the land of
promise,
His descendants reach Rome which is out of which his descendants will rule
destined to rule the world (Aen. 1.57-59; other peoples (Gen. 17.5; 27.29;
286-88; 3.97). 49.10).
Aeneas is told that the gap will be 333
years (Aen. 1.270-72).
Abraham is told that the gap will be
400 (Gen. 15.13) or 430 years (cf.
Exod. 12.41).
The gap is filled by introducing a long dynasty. In the case of the
Israelites, the Genesis traditions of nomadic ancestors and their wor-
ship of El in Canaan were adopted from peoples who lived in the
region before the settlement of the Israelite tribes. The pentateuchal
traditions attest that the Patriarchs did not know Yahweh, the national
God (Exod. 6.3-5). The stories about Jacob may come from the
Canaanites also-the name Jacob is similar to that of a prince of the
Hyksos dynasty, Yaqob-hr (Weinfeld 1993: 8-9). Weinfeld draws
attention to the similar language used in the depiction of Abraham and
David and argues that Abraham is a retrojection of David, as pious
Aeneas was a retrojection of pious Augustus (1993: 9-11).
The Significance and Provenance of the Abraham Narrative
The focus of the patriarchal 'history' is set out in Gen. 12.1-3,
wherein Abram is commanded to leave his country and move to
where he will gain both land and posterity. However, neither
Abraham nor any of the patriarchs ever owned the land-it was the
land of the Canaanites (Gen. 12.6; 13.7) and others (Gen. 23)-but
were merely resident aliens (Gen. 23.4; 35.27). Indeed, the book ends
with Joseph being put in a coffin in Egypt (Gen. 50.26), with the
result that the patriarchal narrative begins with a patriarch away from
the land of promise and ends with another in Egypt. While the
promise of progeny is fulfilled within the narrative, that of being a
famous nation which would be victorious over enemies (Gen. 12.2-3;
17.2-5, etc.) remained to be fulfilled. The dying Joseph assured his
brothers, 'I am about to die; but God will surely come to you, and
bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to
Isaac, and to Jacob' (Gen. 50.24).
The accounts relating to the patriarchs are distinctive in that, in
general, they do not provide information of a historical kind. Instead
we have a succession of family events and highly charged religious
episodes, with Abraham functioning as an example of faith. The 'facts'
of the patriarchal narratives are virtually outside time, with the result
that the incidents have been dated variously within the range 2500-
200 BC. It was not necessary for the narrator to have precise infor-
mation about the past, since his purpose was not to write a detached
history, but to insert material about the past of the archetypal patri-
archal figures who moved against a background which is outside
historical time into a construction which suited his intentions and his
perceptions of what was best for his readership at the time of final
composition (Garbini 1988: 15), perhaps during the Babylonian exile.
The exiled Judahites employed the patriarchal narrative of a mythi-
cal and legendary past to affirm their right to represent all Israel,
making Abraham the ancestor of Jacob and the recipient of the divine
promise. This promise repudiated the monarchy which, in general,
they judged to have failed them and vested the divine relationship with
the whole people. By situating the origin of Abraham in Ur, the exiles
could ingratiate themselves to their new rulers.
3
This tracing of ori-
gins finds an analogue in the mythical and legendary past which Rome
created for itself not long after. Ahlstrom argues that the Abraham
tradition reached its final redaction after the Babylonian Exile, when
the right to the land was denied to the returnees. The absence of ref-
erence to the figure of Abraham in the so-called deuteronomistic his-
tory and in most of the pre-exilic prophets supports the post-exilic
dating (Ahlstrom 1993: 182).
The present Mesopotamian form of the Abraham narrative, with its
insistence on his ancestorship of not only the Israelites and Judahites,
but also of the Arabs through Ishmael (Gen. 25.12-18), of the
Aramaeans through Jacob and his mother Rebecca, of the Moabites
and the Ammonites through Abraham's nephew, Lot, and the
Edomites through his grandson Esau (Gen. 25.25; Deut. 2.4-7), had as
its purpose the projection of most of the west-Semitic world and its
peoples as the descendants of Abraham. Abram's wanderings were the
means through which the kinship of all the west-Semitic peoples could
be established. Abraham was the ideal ancestor of the peoples of Israel
and Judah. When the post-exilic community was in distress, the
people's prehistory was idealized. Abraham represented a former
'golden age' (see Ahlstrom 1993: 184-87).
3. Garbini suggests that Ur of the Chaldeans and Haran were inserted to situate
Abraham in Mesopotamia and Syria in the time of the Babylonian ruler, Nabonidus.
The two cities contained the most important sanctuaries of the cult of the moon god
Sin, of whom Nabonidus was a fervent adherent. Thus, the Judahites in exile in
Babylon were able to posit an original link between themselves as exiles and the king
they served. This gave them a way of declaring themselves 'fellow-countrymen' of
Nabonidus (Garbini 1988: 77-78). The narrative of the migration of Abram, then,
found a realistic context in the Babylon of Nabonidus. The promise of numerous
descendants (Gen. 15) was the king's prerogative in the ancient Near East. Garbini
argues that the Genesis text is consistent with the anti-monarchy sentiments reflected
in Isa. 55.3 and Ezek. 34.9-10, which are products of exilic, Babylonian Judaism
and dates the Genesis text to around 500 BC.
It is likely that there were earlier traditions about Abraham, such as
that concerning Sodom and Gomorrah, on to which other ones, for
example, those concerning Jacob, were added during the Babylonian
captivity. The ubiquitous Jacob of the narrative (in the south, in
Transjordan, in central Palestine and in the north) made him a suitable
eponymous ancestor of all Israel, as father of the twelve eponymous
ancestors of the twelve tribes. Despite the prominence given to Jacob,
pre-eminence was given to Abraham, the progenitor of the nation
(Exod. 2.24; 4.5; 32.13; Ezek. 33.24; Mic. 7.20), perhaps because of
the fact that his 'activities' in the southern kingdom of Judah made
him a favourite with the Judahites who united the traditions, perhaps
in the exile. In that scenario, the patriarchal narrative as we have it
represents the narrator's redaction and interpretation of the traditions
available to him, which he published in conformity with his assess-
ment of affairs. He wrote in support of the Babylonian Jews' repudia-
tion of the royal ideology and to affirm the authenticity and even
supremacy of the Judahite theology of Babylon, thereby giving birth
to Judaism (cf. Garbini 1988: 85).
The Pentateuchal Narratives
The synchronic fashion of reading the Pentateuch concentrates on the
completed text, bypasses questions of historicity and focuses on its
religious value (see Childs 1976: 73; Prudky 1995; Whybray 1995:
133-43). The text narrates the history of Israelite origins from crea-
tion to the end of the patriarchs (Genesis) and through the period of
slavery in Egypt to Moses' meeting God on Sinai (Exod. 1-19). After
the laws of the covenant are delivered to Moses (Exod. 20-Num.
10.10), the children of Israel advance from Sinai to the border of the
Promised Land (Num. 10.11-36.13), where the laws are recapitulated
for the new conditions of living in the land (Deut. 1.1-33.29). The
pentateuchal narrative is followed by the account of the people enter-
ing and settling the Promised Land (Joshua, Judges), changing their
method of government from tribal rule to kingship (1-2 Samuel), and,
finally, by an account of life under the kings down to the time of the
Babylonian Exile (1-2 Kings).
It is possible to discern a certain development in the five books. God
created the world and humanity failed him (Gen. 1-11), but, by way
of a new start, God chose a single people to be faithful and to teach
the nations (Gen. 12-50). This people learned the ways of God
through suffering, after which followed their deliverance (Exodus).
The people became God's holy people (Leviticus and Numbers 1-10)
to be led to a Promised Land (Num. 10-36), which they would retain
only on condition of fidelity (Exod. 20.12; Deut. 4.40; 5.16, 29-30;
8.1-9; 11.8-21). The Israelites were to dispossess the indigenous
inhabitants because of their wickedness and in order to fulfil the oath
that the Lord made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Deut. 9.5; cf. Deut.
7). If the greatest gift of the covenant was to live in peace and pros-
perity in the land, the greatest punishment for violating the covenant
would be to suffer the loss of the land (Deut. 4.25-31; cf. Deut. 32.26,
46-47). The land was 'holy' (separate) because Yahweh dwelt in the
midst of Israel (Num. 25.34). The Holiness Code, Lev. 17-26,
emphasizes this aspect. The land itself had vomited out the earlier
inhabitants, and would do so again, if the Israelites committed abomi-
nations and defiled it (Lev. 18.24-30). Among the prohibitions were
harlotry (Lev. 19.29), shedding blood (Num. 29-34; Deut. 21.6-9),
allowing a corpse to hang on a tree (Deut. 21.22-23) and remarriage
(Deut. 24.1-4).
The Question of Sources
Abandoning the presumption of the Mosaic authorship of the
Pentateuch, the classical Documentary Hypothesis of Wellhausen
attempted to account for its composition by postulating earlier small
units which were gradually combined to form written sources. A
writer in Jerusalem, the Yahwist (J), wove existing traditions into an
account of Israelite history down to the high point of the united king-
dom under Solomon (c. 960-920 BC), which constitutes the bulk of
the Pentateuch. After the break-up of the united kingdom, a writer in
the northern kingdom, the Elohist (E), wrote a corresponding account
of Israelite history. On the collapse of the northern kingdom in 721
this was brought south, and a merged version of the history was com-
posed, uniting both traditions (JE). During the reform of King Josiah
in 621 BC (2 Kgs 22-23), Deuteronomy was composed as a collection
of laws (D), which, with its stress on the covenant, caused some
rewriting of the JE history. After the exile and the resettlement in
Judah a new renewal movement grew, which, as it was dominated by
the priests, drew up a body of legislation which stressed the appro-
priate conditions for worship and the construction of a holy nation,
the Priestly tradition (P). This was later merged with JE, giving one
comprehensive account of the people's origins.
Moreover, a general scholastic consensus developed that there were
four main stages of composition of the larger biblical material from
Genesis to Kings, beginning perhaps in the tenth century, and not
reaching its final state until perhaps the second century BC. These doc-
umentary hypotheses questioned the acceptance of the historicity of
not only Genesis 1-11, but of the patriarchal stories and the Mosaic
traditions, and argued that while the four discrete sources contained
valuable information on the periods of composition, they were of little
value for reconstructing the early history of Israel. Subsequent schol-
arship departed from the notion of J, E and Pas independent, coher-
ent documents and instead suggested that the traditions from which the
documentary sources derived were largely folkloric and legendary
oral material, long antedating their literary composition. Neverthe-
less, conservative reaction to the de-historicization of the biblical nar-
ratives implied in the Documentary Hypothesis insisted on the
historicity of core events at the heart of the literary accretions within
the biblical texts, including within the patriarchal narratives. In that
way the alleged historicity of the kernel of the patriarchal narratives
was salvaged, with the oldest traditions (J and E) likely to be closest to
the historical core of Israel's earliest history. W.F. Albright cham-
pioned the situating of the patriarchal narratives within a specific Near
Eastern historical period, thereby affirming their essentially historical
character.
However, the classical documentary four-source hypothesis has
come under terminal strain (Blum 1990; Rendtorff 1977; Schmid
1976; Van Seters 1975). Several scholars question the very existence
of the J tradition, and the available evidence does not support the
claim that E was an autonomous tradition. In addition, there is dis-
agreement about the nature and range of the 'deuteronomic' compo-
nent in Genesis to Numbers. Moreover, there is discussion about
whether P should be regarded as an originally independent source or a
revision of an earlier non-priestly composition (Vervenne 1994: 246).
Several scholars conclude that up to the sixth-century exile at the ear-
liest, there was no 'Pentateuch' as such (see Whybray 1987: 221).
4
4. Blum, for example, rejects independent and parallel sources for Genesis-
Deuteronomy and suggests that it results from two post-exilic compositions which
united a pre-priestly composition of deuteronomic type (KD) and a writing of the
Diachronic Concerns
The tendency to concentrate on the final form of the pentateuchal nar-
rative and the so-called deuteronomistic history (from Deuteronomy
to 2 Kgs 25, with, perhaps, Genesis-Numbers added later as an intro-
duction [Mayes 1983: 139-49; Rendtorff 1990: 200]) evades the prob-
lems which are posed by a consideration of the mode of composition
of the work. However, in approaching documents from antiquity, one
should seek to discover what happened in the past, how the 'events'
were understood and what the intention of the author was (see
Ahlstrom 1993: 19). In addition, one must pose literary questions of
the genre, the sources and their use and the Tendenz of the author(s)
of the material. Such queries are frequently evaded in favour of a
historicist reading of the biblical text, which is justified in virtue of its
supposed benefits for faith.
5
There is considerable reluctance to apply the usual criteria of
investigation to documents which deal with matters of religious faith,
and resistance to abandoning the sure ground of the historicity of the
biblical accounts of the promise of land and the subsequent settlement
in Canaan etc. But, as has been shown comprehensively by
T. Thompson (1974) and others, the pentateuchal narratives cannot
serve as a guide to what happened in the early Israelite period, and
one must seek a better explanation of the material. Suzanne Boorer' s
study examines the motif of the promise of land in the Tetrateuch, in
Deuteronomy, in Joshua-Kings and Jeremiah, and concludes that the
motif was peculiar to the narrowly defined circles of thought of a
deuteronomistic school (1992: 37). She argues that the promise of
land as oath entered the Pentateuch gradually through a dynamic pro-
cess of redaction, with the result that the ongoing reflection makes it
difficult to discover a single meaning for the land motif.
The idea of the land which is to be possessed dominates the book of
Deuteronomy from beginning to end and forms the theme both of the
priestly school (KP). The Pentateuch was a historical compromise between two dif-
ferent tendencies (KD and KP), represented by two dominant groups in the com-
munity of the second temple. The 'final form' was a complex amalgam which could
not be the product of a single intention (Blum 1990: 5. 102-1 04; see Lopez 1994: 50).
5. It is not enough to say of a text such as the crossing of the Jordan with dry
feet (Josh. 4.21-22), 'That is a datum of faith'. An assertion of faith is not an ade-
quate response to a literary, or historical or archaeological question (see Hemelsoet
1995).
laws and of the paraenetic discourse.
6
At the surface level, the purpose
of the deuteronomic commandments is to lay down the new style of
cultus and way of life for the radically changed circumstances arising
from the settlement: 'When you come into the land which Yahweh
your God gives to you, then you shall ... ' (see von Rad 1966: 90-91).
In a literalist reading the book appears to sanction a policy of the
ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Canaanite population to make way
for God's chosen people (Deut. 7.2). The possession of the Promised
Land was to be carried out through the genocide of the resident
people and not simply by dispossessing them (e.g. Deut. 20.16-18). As
we shall see, the available evidence does not support the execution of
any such widespread and violent intrusion by the 'Israelites', which
invites one to construct a more likely scenario for the biblical texts.
A plausible context for the composition of Deuteronomy is to see it
as the blueprint for a fresh start for one of the waves of exiles return-
ing to Palestine from Babylonia, rather than a record of what hap-
pened before 'the entry of the Israelites into the Promised Land some
seven hundred years earlier'. The priestly-prophetic author of Deuter-
onomy encourages the returning exiles to set foot on the land of their
ancestors again. This confessional community is encouraged to pursue
zealously the purity of its exclusive faith, disdainful of the inhabitants
they encounter on their return (Mayes 1981: 113). The returning
exiles are addressed in the manner of the Moab generation listening to
Moses (Deurleo 1994: 46). The reform community consisted of those
who took to heart the words of this book (30.1), identifying with the
Moab and Horeb generation. The central theme of Deuteronomy is a
call to the service of the one God by an elect people centred around
one sanctuary, through obedience to the law in the land which God has
given (Mayes 1981: 57-58).
7
6. The land is a critical factor in the redemption to which Israel has been
brought. That God has given the land occurs in all parts of the book (e.g. 1.36, 39;
3.18; 15.17; 16.20; 17.14; 18.9; 19.8; 26.9; 27.2; 28.8; 34.4, etc.-see further
Pli:iger 1967: 134-126). Yahweh also gives cities (13.13; 20.16), gates or towns
(16.5, 18), peoples (17.6), nations (19.1), booty (20.14), rest and inheritance
(12.9), blessing (12.15), herds and flocks (12.21), sons and daughters (28.53) and
strength to get wealth (8.18) (see Miller 1969: 453).
7. The central issue in the theology of Deuteronomy is belief in the one God.
The tetragrammaton occurs no less than 561 times in the book; note also the
monotheistic statements of the book (especially Deut. 4.35, 39; 6.4; 7.9; 32.39).
In the framework to the deuteronomic legislation, especially in
Deut. 4.25-31 and 30.1-10, the curse of the law which Israel would
experience in exile would be succeeded by the blessing of renewal and
restoration. This perspective reinforced the belief that exile from the
land was the greatest form of punishment, a theme reinforced by the
prophets, and the experience of the nation of Israel, that sin and exile
were synonymous and intimately linked. Very little in Deuteronomy
suggests a spirit of preparedness to cohabit with the wider world in a
spirit of respect for the surrounding cultures-exceptions being the
concession of accepting third generation Edomites (Deut. 23.4-9),
marriage with a foreign woman taken captive in war (Deut. 21.10-14)
and the care for the ger, the foreigner in Israel's midst (Deut. 14.29;
16.11, 14, etc.). Deuteronomy looks rather like a constitution suited to
the religious ghetto, for religious zealots for whom the worship of
God and the study of his law appear to be the only worthwhile human
activity, which may be carried out in ways which appear to be dis-
dainful of the wider world. The deuteronomistic theology reflects an
intensity of relationship between one national people and their tribal
God. Such a theology will attract only the introspective and xenopho-
bic members of the 'national' group.
The 'Israelite' Conquest-Settlement Narratives
While it is unanimous in affirming that Israel was not native to the
land, but arrived from outside and conquered it, the Bible has two
contrasting and in many respects contradictory accounts of the
Israelite settlement of Canaan.
8
If Joshua 1-12 suggests an almost
complete and violent conquest, Judges 1 (cf. Josh 15.13-19, 63; 16.10;
17.11-13; 19.4 7) narrates a partial conquest and gradual consolidation
8. Historically, the term 'Canaan' referred to the Bronze Age territory of
Palestine and 'Canaanites' to its inhabitants. The terms are radically transposed cen-
turies later in the biblical tradition, in which the 'Canaanites' are perceived to consti-
tute the population of pre-Israelite Palestine and to have an ethnic coherence.
T. Thompson suggests that the name 'Israel', first attested in the Merneptah inscrip-
tion of the late thirteenth century, may also at that period refer to a region (1992:
139). The Bronze Age is divided into the Early Bronze Age (3200-2000), the Middle
Bronze Age I (2000-1800), Middle Bronze Age II (1800-1650), Middle Bronze Age
III (1650-1550), Late Bronze Age I (1550-1400), and Late Bronze Age II (1400-
1200).
in the land.
9
As well as conveying religious import, these conflicting
accounts pose historical and literary questions. The discovery of what
really happened in the 'Israelite'
10
conquest-settlement, as well as sat-
isfying legitimate curiosity about the past, has considerable theological
and ethical implications, lending biblical authority either to violent
conquest or to gradual infiltration and relatively peaceful settlement.
In a number of places the biblical narratives give evidence of Israelite
bad conscience at dispossessing others.''
Two primary sources, archaeological and literary (biblical and extra-
biblical), are available to the historian of Syro-Palestine, and these are
supplemented by insights from geography, sociology, anthropology,
historical linguistics, Egyptology, Assyriology, etc., each of which
disciplines has developed independent methodologies. Until recently,
biblical interpretation has occupied the centre stage of the discussion
of Israelite origins, with all other evidence being in its service.
12
The
9. Weinfeld suggests that the traditions which set Joshua at the head of the con-
quest may have been created in the sanctuaries in the north, while in the account in
the southern kingdom of Judah Joshua is missing (1993: 154).
10. It is important to respect the multifarious meanings of the term 'Israelite' and
to avoid the anachronism of identifying the name in the post-exilic context of the bib-
lical narrative with a putative reality in the Iron Age. The archaeological evidence
from Iron I Palestine does not justify the use of the term 'Israelite'. It could be used
in Iron Age II if it could be shown that the regional state of 'Israel' was distinctively
'Israelite'. Correspondingly, the term 'Canaanite' is inappropriate for those periods
also, since it implies a regional and often ethnic unity among the inhabitants of
Palestine which is contradicted by the available evidence. The post-exilic biblical
polarity between 'Israelite' and 'Canaanite' should not be imposed on the earlier
period, especially since all the available evidence from the region contradicts it. The
Iron Age Period is divided into Iron Age IA (c. 1200-1125); Iron Age IB (1125-
1050); Iron Age IIA (1050-900); Iron Age liB (900-800); Iron IIC (800-540);
while Iron III (540--332) is usually called the 'Persian Period'.
11. E.g. Josh 24.13 (Israel did not develop the land), Josh 24.8 (the land is
called 'of the Amorites'); Judg. 11.19-21 (dispossession affirmed); cf. 2 Sam. 7.23;
Num. 33.50-52. The conquest is justified because of the inhabitants' iniquity (Deut.
9.4-6; 18.9-14; 22.2-4-cf. Pss. 44.3; 105.44). Bad conscience over the dispos-
session of others, or the need to justify it is reflected as late as the turn of the first
century (l Mace. 15.33). Coexisting with this strain is the persistent view that the
land belonged to Yahweh (e.g. Num. 26.55; Ezek. 47.13-14), and cultic offerings
were to be made in acknowledgment of his ownership (Exod. 22.28; Lev. 18.24,
etc.).
12. See Coote and Whitelam 1987: 13. In Whitelam's estimation, the history of
biblical narratives concerning thirteenth and twelfth centuries BC
Palestine show little historical knowledge of the political scene. The
reader learns nothing of Egypt's rule over the country, nor of the
garrison cities and Egyptian temples. There is no mention of an
Egyptian campaign, nor of Merneptah's destruction. In fact, no
Egyptian pharaoh is mentioned by name before Shoshenq (Shishak)
marched through Palestine in the fifth year of Rehoboam's reign
(1 Kgs 14.25). It is possible, of course, to account for this by propos-
ing that annalistic writings did not occur before the emergence of the
monarchy (Ahlstrom 1993: 347). The biblical accounts reflect particu-
lar perspectives, and the context and authorial intent, as well as the
genre of the narratives must be respected.
Throughout this century there has been intensive study of the
'Israelite' settlement in Canaan. Archaeologists place it within the
period of the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age transition, invariably
appealing to an alleged sharp break between these two cultures. This
has resulted in a number of models of Israelite settlement, each of
which bears a particular relationship to the biblical text and suggests a
different evaluation of the nature and theological significance of the
event. Two of the three major models, nomadic infiltration and large-
scale invasion, postulate substantial intervention from outside, while
the third proposes the hypothesis of a mainly internal peasants' with-
drawal from, or revolt against the Canaanite cities.
13
Nomadic Infiltration Model
The nomadic infiltration model, associated with the 'German School'
of Alt (1953a, 1953b, 1966), Noth (1960) and Weippert (1971, 1979)
was first proposed in the 1920s and 1930s. Alt distinguished between
two types of society in Palestine in the Late Bronze period. The
ancient Palestine, particularly from the thirteenth century BC to the second century AD
has been merely a backdrop to the history of Israel, Judah and Second Temple
Judaism, with ancient Israelite history being viewed as the domain of religion or
theology rather than of history. The driving force within biblical studies has been the
search for ancient Israel as the taproot of Western civilization and the antecedent of
Christianity, and, more recently, has been reinforced by the foundation of the State
of Israel, with Israeli scholars searching for their own national identity in the past
(Whitelam 1996: 2-3, ll9).
13. In the following overview of the models the convenience of grouping schol-
ars within particular schools conceals the often substantial differences between mem-
bers of the same 'school'.
pharaoh exercised power vicariously through vassal 'petty' princes
who governed a number of small 'city-states' centred on a town
mainly in the coastal lowlands. Life in the highlands was less devel-
oped due to the lack of good arable land. Alt considered that the
geographical and historical setting of the patriarchal narrative was
altogether fictional, and that the roots of the pre-settlement 'Israelites'
were outside of Palestine. In contrast to the settled 'Canaanites', the
pre-settlement 'Israelites' were pastoralist nomads, or semi-nomads, in
search of land, who, in accordance with their natural migratory
movement, infiltrated gradually into the sparsely populated hill coun-
try of Canaan. These nomadic groups migrated annually between the
winter pastures in the steppes east of Palestine and the summer pas-
tures in the central hills of Palestine. Gradually, they settled more
permanently, and as they grew in numbers they began to put pressure
on the land of the Canaanite city-states in the valleys. The peaceful
settlement was facilitated by the dissolution of the Bronze Age cities
by c. 1200 BC (Weippert 1971: 133).
The political map of Palestine
14
changed on the collapse of Egyptian
power at the end of the Late Bronze Age, leaving some six states in
the area. Alt assumed that the shift in power could be explained only
by recourse to external influence. The band of nomadic foreigners
called 'Israelites' associated with each other through the bonds of a
sacral confederation of tribes, with Yahweh, the non-Canaanite god
being worshipped at a special cult centre. Alt' s cultic amphictyony
developed into a political league which was finally replaced by a
monarchy. Central to Alt's reconstruction was his alleged polarity
between 'Canaanite' and 'Israelite' culture, coinciding with the sup-
posed contrast between Palestine's Late Bronze ('Canaanite') 'city-
states' and the Iron Age ('Israelite') 'nation-state'.
The relatively peaceful infiltration of various tribes into the unoc-
cupied hill country later became a militant one. An increase in
14. The name 'Palestine' does not imply that the region constituted a socially,
politically or economically homogeneous entity which evolved in a coherent and
consistent fashion independent of its wider context. 'Palestine' was fragmented eco-
logically and geographically into a number of distinct, isolated cultural sub-regions.
The regional disparities were so decisive that in the period preceding Assyrian impe-
rial domination Palestine consisted of small, largely independent petty chieftainships
and was a 'heartland of villages', a domain of scrub farmers and shepherds rather
than of kings and emperors (Thompson 1992: 191, 187, 193-94).
population followed by expansion of their territory to include the
lowlands caused conflicts with the Canaanites through limited military
campaigns, which is reflected in the account in the book of Judges.
Because the 'Israelites' were not able to eliminate all the 'Canaanites',
religious and cultural problems became the order of the day. These
small-scale military exploits eventually inspired the legendary mate-
rial in Joshua and Judges. While cities such as Razor and Luz/Bethel
were destroyed, the bulk of the material in Joshua is fictional and is a
series of aetiologies composed to account for names, customs and
ruins. The fruit of the change was the development of a national con-
sciousness and the construction of 'nation-states'. For Alt, the sweep-
ing away of the 'city-state' system by Israel and Judah was the defining
moment in the history of the region. The entry of the 'Israelites' into
Palestine paved the way for the ultimate achievement of David and
Solomon, an achievement beyond the capabilities of the indigenous
population (1966: 160).
15
Large-Scale Invasion
In sharp contrast, the 'American School' of Albright ( 1935, 1939),
Bright (1956, 1981) and Wright (1962), joined by some Israeli schol-
ars (Aharoni 1979: 200-29; Malamat 1979, 1982; Yadin 1979, 1982),
argued that the archaeological evidence supported the essential his-
toricity of the account of a unified, violent large-scale invasion and
conquest by 'Israelite' nomads led by Joshua, which destroyed several
Canaanite cities in the process (Josh. 1-12). Razor, Debir, Lachish and
Luz/Bethel had been destroyed in the thirteenth century BC, and
Albright maintained that the strata above the levels of destruction wit-
nessed to a new material culture, which he attributed to the Israelites
of the Iron Age period.
However, several arguments converge to conclude that the account
in the book of Joshua is not a record of what actually happened, and
that to attempt to harmonize the narrative with the real history of
origins would be in vain. Albright's reconstruction lacked convincing
archaeological evidence from the Late Bronze Age period. The fact
15. White1am claims that the source of Alt' s insight was the increasing Zionist
immigration into Palestine, which was under way as Alt engaged in his research
( 1996: 76). Volkmar Fritz argues for a variant of the infiltration hypothesis, which he
calls the symbiosis hypothesis (1981; 1987).
that Jericho,
16
Ai, and Gibeon and Heshbon in Trans jordan did not
exist as walled cities in the thirteenth century BC makes the conquest
model unacceptable. While Hebron (Judg. 1.8) and Debir (Judg. 1.13)
were destroyed in the thirteenth century BC, and Lachish, Tel Beit
Mirsim and Gezer were destroyed c. 1200 BC, no evidence requires
that these destructions were carried out by the 'Israelites'. Moreover,
archaeologists were finding it increasingly difficult to identify as
peculiarly 'Israelite' the early Iron Age strata, raising the question as
to whether the 'Israelites' and the 'Canaanites', diametrically opposed
in Albright's reconstruction of history, were ethnically distinct
peoples.
Peasants' Revolt
The 'German' and 'American' models share the view that at the
beginning of the Iron Age there was a large-scale entry of people
(later called 'Israelites') into the central hill country of Canaan,
whether through relatively peaceful nomadic infiltration (German) or
through invasion (American). George Mendenhall rejected the hypo-
theses of a large-scale influx of outsiders into Canaan. He claimed that
the late Bronze Canaanite city-state system was a brutal, oppressive
and dysfunctional structure which dominated the whole of Palestine
and Syria. The 'apiru of the Amama letters were homeless and state-
less indigenous Canaanite peasant malcontents who revolted against
Egyptian exploitation.
17
These large population groups withdrew, not
physically and geographically, but politically and subjectively from
the existing political regimes and gave their allegiance to Yahweh, the
overlord of a small group of slaves who had escaped from Egypt.
This found a sympathetic resonance among the indigenous Canaanite
peasants, who had been subjugated and exploited, and inspired the
'apiru to create a 'religious federation' of Yahweh-covenanters, who
16. Kenyon reopened the Jericho excavation in 1952 and established that the Tel
es-Sultan mound was in an almost complete state of abandonment for all conceivable
periods of the biblical account of the occupation, from 1500--c. 860 BC.
17. Many of the 350 texts consist of letters written by Syro-Palestinian leaders to
Egypt or copies of letters written from Egypt to local rulers within the Egyptian
empire in the Late Bronze period, mostly in the reigns of Pharaohs Amenophis III
(c. 1414-1397 BC) and Amenophis IV (c. 1379-1362 BC). In one, Abdu-Heba of
Jerusalem writes that 'The Apiru plunder all the lands of the king ... All the lands of
the king, my lord, are lost!' (ANET 487-88).
rejected the social and religious system of Late Bronze Age Canaan
(Mendenhall1962: 72-73).
18
Mendenhall's views were carried further by Norman Gottwald, who
also emphasized the non-nomadic character of Israel's origins and
proposed a class warfare model of a socialist proletarian revolution.
He viewed the Canaanite city-state initially in feudalistic terms, with
an 'elite' aristocracy lording it over an oppressed 'peasant' class
(1979: 212). The group of slaves which had fled from Egypt, having
made a covenant with Yahweh in the desert, settled in Canaan (1979:
211). Whereas the inhabitants of Canaan had El for their god at first,
they adopted Yahweh at Shechem (Josh. 24), who thus became the god
of a new society of revolutionary covenanters, the 'Israelites' (1979:
564-66).
Gottwald added a novel element, blending abstract sociological the-
ory with historical reconstruction. Unlike Mendenhall, who regarded
the Israelite society as an apolitical 'religious federation', Gottwald,
using Marxist categories, emphasized the relations of power and the
demands of the peasantry in their fight against their Canaanite oppres-
sors. Working within the paradigm of Alt's model of a shift in power
from the 'city-states' in the plains to the 'national states' in the hills,
Gottwald stressed the revolutionary aspect of the transition from an
oppressed proletariat to a relatively egalitarian society. Archaeo-
logical evidence confirms that hundreds of settlements throughout
Palestine, unoccupied in the Bronze Age, were settled peacefully,
beginning at the end of the thirteenth century and continuing for two
centuries. This egalitarian society, bonded together on the basis of
social revolution, continued to wage war on the Canaanites until the
unification achieved by King David.
Each of the three models has had its advocates and critics (see
Gnuse 1991; Ramsey 1981). The similarity between 'Israelite' and
Late Bronze Canaanite culture argued against both the 'German' and
'American' views that the Israelites were aliens. The violent conquest
model was criticized for its apologetic attempts to verify the biblical
text by recourse to archaeology. Moreover, the destruction of the
18. More recent study of the 'apiru of the Amarna letters sees the term as refer-
ring to the social status of groups who, because of the collapse of their economic cir-
cumstances, were relegated to the fringes of society and were in conflict with local
rulers rather than to any specific ethnic group in Palestine. There is no reason to sus-
pect continuity between these groups and the post-exilic biblical term 'ibrim.
Canaanite cttles was accounted for more readily at the hands of
Egyptian campaigns, or by those of the invading Sea Peoples: the
cities were not destroyed at the same period, and several cities cited in
the Joshua's conquest narrative were not inhabited in the Late Bronze-
Early Iron Age transition (e.g. Kadesh-Barnea, Arad, Jericho, Ai).
In addition to the weakness of the absence of any historical evidence
for such a social revolution, Gottwald's attempt to expand Alt's model
of Israelite origins presents too many methodological problems.
19
The
proponents of the peasant revolution model, then, have not provided
compelling evidence for such a revolution in 'ancient Israel', and the
imposition of modern social theory and anthropological and sociologi-
cal models is no substitute for the more pedestrian requirements for
unique evidence demanded by a truly scientific historiography.
Two recent developments contribute to the assessment that each of
the three models is an invention rather than a description of an ancient
past. Literary and source criticism of the Pentateuch and the so-called
deuteronomistic history of Genesis-2 Kings casts serious doubt on the
validity of using these late traditions for the historical reconstruction
of a much earlier past. Secondly, the accumulating archaeological data
from single-site excavations and regional surveys conflict with the
claims of the biblical narrative (see Finkelstein 1990: 37-84; Mazar
1990: 328-38). Running consistently through the theories which respect
the archaeological evidence is the affirmation that the Late Bronze-
Iron Age transition was marked by peaceful, indigenous change, giving
a picture which is very much at variance with the biblical narrative.
Israelite Settlement as a Peaceful Internal Process
Anticipating recent discussion, de Geus argued that the 'Israelites' were
indigenous to the territory for centuries before the 'conquest' (1976:
123-27), and constituted a settled rather than a nomadic society (129-
30). They were united on ethnic grounds and were settled highlanders
who used tribal nomenclature in varying fashion (172). Subsequently,
19. See Thompson 1992: 58-59, who adds that what is amazing about the
'models' of Mendenhall and Gottwald is not that their theories were unsupported by
evidence, but that, lacking evidence, they were ever proposed ( 1992: 405).
Gottwald's reconstruction of Israelite origins suffers from the absence of a credible
account of the nature and origins of the Canaanite city-state culture which is consis-
tent with what we know of it, and from a misrepresentation of Marx's account of
'Asiatic modes of production' (see T. Thompson 1992:5 1-57).
the 'new search' for ancient Israel of the mid to late 1980s has yielded
a crop of new works which question the appropriateness of using the
much later biblical traditions as evidence for the alleged Israelite
origins in the Late Bronze-Iron Age transition.
20
They emphasize the
indigenous nature of 'Israel' in the Palestine of the period of transi-
tion, since the numerous reports on site excavations and surveys stress
the continuity between Late Bronze Age material culture and that of
the Iron I settlements. This points to indigenous development rather
than what came from the settlement of outsiders.
Unfortified highland villages rather than walled cities have become
the target of archaeological investigation, whose findings have empha-
sized the similarities between Israelite and Canaanite culture. The
peaceful nature of the unfortified village settlements is obvious. More-
over, the highland villages betray such similarity with the culture of
the lowland Canaanite cities (in pottery, farming techniques, tools and
construction patterns, etc.) that they are considered to have been an
outgrowth of lowland urban culture. In this interpretation of the evi-
dence, the Canaanites who peacefully withdrew from their cities and
moved to the highlands gradually evolved into Israelites (Gnuse 1991:
60). For Ahlstrom, the term 'Israel' was a place name, deriving from
the Canaanite divine name El (1986: 6-9), which was applied to a
people only with the rise of the united monarchy, and in post-exilic
times assumed religious connotations. Ahlstrom explains the con-
tinuity of culture between the lowlands and the highlands by propos-
ing that the highland people withdrew from the lowland cities due to
the violence perpetrated by the Egyptians and the Sea Peoples (1986:
6-9, 18-36, 58-61). While most of the highland villagers were Canaan-
ite, he allows for the entry of some foreigners from the south and
east, who brought the worship of Yahweh with them (1986: 7-8, 92-94).
Variants of the model of peaceful withdrawal from the lowlands
have been advocated by Meyers (who postulates war and plague as
reasons for withdrawal), Soggin (who suggests that it was to avoid
heavy taxation) and many others. Several scholars consider the
Israelites to have been indigenous to the highlands before the collapse
20. E.g. Lemche (1985, 1988), Ahlstrom (1986, 1993), Coote and Whitelam
(1987), Finkelstein (1988, 1990), T. Thompson ( 1987, 1992). Thompson 1992
evaluates recent scholarship and outlines the future task of constructing an early his-
tory of the Israelite people free of the constraints imposed by a mistaken understand-
ing of the biblical narrative as historiography.
of the Canaanite city states. Some Canaanites did withdraw from the
urban centres, but the majority of the highlands population derived
from the settlement of pastoralist nomads from the Canaanite valleys,
who were ethnically distinct from the Canaanites but enjoyed close
cultural links with them (see Gnuse 1991: 109; Hopkins 1987: 191;
Kochavi 1985; Mazar 1985; Stager 1981: 1; 1985a: 84; 1985b: 3).
Finkelstein's synthetic survey of archaeological remains from the
early Iron Age period, both in the highland and in the lowland settle-
ments in Palestine radically changes our perception about Israelite
origins (1988a). His model of internal nomadism proposes that the
Israelites were 'enclosed nomads' who lived within the land of Canaan
throughout the Late Bronze Age (1550-1200 BC) in close proximity
with the urban centres without settling down. With the collapse of the
cities, economic factors, such as the need to produce grain and so
forth, forced them to settle. Initially, they settled in the Ephraimite
highlands and spread north into Galilee, westward into the central
highlands and southward into Judah (Finkelstein 1988a: 324-35),
developing horticultural as well as agricultural skills. With increasing
population, they expanded into the lowlands, which brought them into
violent conflict with the inhabitants there, which perdured until the
consolidation of their position under David. Finkelstein's excavations
at Shiloh and elsewhere on the highlands convinced him, as it has
convinced others, of the continuity between Canaanite and Israelite
culture in Iron Age I.
Finkelstein attempts an historical overview of the whole process
(1988a: 315-22). Following Rowton's model of enclosed nomadism,
he asserts that before the domestication of camels, pastoral nomads
were constrained to live in close proximity to settled areas. The nomads
exchanged livestock, meat and skins for grain, horticultural produce
and manufactured goods (1988b: 36). These pastoral nomads ('proto-
lsraelites') were in the land as early as the Middle Bronze Age II
(1750-1550). The highlands, he argues, were the first to be occupied
in times of prosperity and the first to depopulate in difficult times.
While the Middle Bronze Age lib (1750-1650) was a period of pros-
perity that of Middle Bronze Age lie (1650-1550) was one of decline.
In fact the entire Late Bronze Age (1550-1220) was an era of decline
on both sides of the Jordan. Egyptian wars and crippling taxation
policies led to the further decline of the highland villages and to a
withdrawal into nomadism (1988a: 339-43).
According to Finkelstein, as a result of the collapse of lowland
urban centres, people began to settle down in the highlands as early as
the thirteenth century BC, beginning a process that would ultimately
lead to the formation of a state (1988b: 41-45). The settlement process
was a gradual and peaceful resedentarization, until the settlers came
into conflict with Canaanite centres (1988a: 348-51). The biblical
account is a much later reinterpretation of the process (1988a: 337).
However, central to Finkelstein's reconstruction is his postulate that
the Iron Age settlement of the hill country and Galilee was 'Israelite',
as distinct from the lowland 'Canaanite' culture, a conjecture whose
driving force may be the later biblical historiographers' insistence on
an 'ethnic' distinction between the two.
According to Lemche, Israel's origins lie firmly within Canaanite
culture, with the Israelites being in continuity with the Canaanites in
culture, ethnicity and religion (1985: 66-7 6). A certain distinctiveness
from Canaanites gradually developed over a period of time, which
was based on socio-economic rather than ethnic factors. The peasants
of Canaan, among whom one counts the 'apiru and other landless
people, evolved into the Israelites in a gradual process which reached
its completion only in the time of David, when Israel manifested a
conscious unity for the first time (Lemche 1985: 295).
Stiebing stresses climatic factors in accounting for the historical
process (1989). Dry conditions and drought between 1250 and 1200
BC caused population decline in the Mediterranean region, leading to
lowlanders abandoning the cities and withdrawing to the highlands.
With more moist conditions, the population increased from 1000 BC
on, leading to the creation of a monarchical state. Israel, then, was
created, not by the introduction of new peoples, but by a natural
increase in population due to favourable climatic and agricultural
conditions. Coote and Whitelam attribute the rise of Israel to a repeat-
ing cycle of hinterlands developing in periods of economic prosperity
and being able to absorb the populations from the lowland cities when
these collapse (Coote and Whitelam 1987: 129). Flanagan also rejects
any notion of conquest, infiltration or revolt and stresses the lack of
unity prior to David, affirming that the rise of David marks the true
cultural and religious unification of Israel (1988: 166). State forma-
tion was due to natural population increase more than to settlement of
lowlanders. The archaeological evidence, then, suggests reconstruc-
tions which stress the indigenous nature of the changing population
patterns and continuity of culture. It offers no support to a model of
aggressive intrusion from the outside.
Regional Diversity and Ethnic Identity
The ethnic unity of the inhabitants of any Palestinian region is
unlikely, given the movement of peoples throughout the whole of the
eastern Mediterranean world and Palestine at the turn of the millen-
nium. Moreover, climatic changes profoundly changed the settlement
patterns. Regional surveys reveal that during the Late Bronze dry
spell, the well-watered lowlands suffered a loss of many small vil-
lages, and the diminished population consolidated itself in the larger
towns. The great Mycenaean drought in the transition to the early
Iron Age brought a deepening economic depression which led to a
widespread dispersal of the lowland population into a large number of
smaller settlements. In the uplands, the climatic stress caused the wide-
spread collapse and abandonment of sedentary village agriculture and
gave birth to a complex of small village settlements in the central hills
during Iron Age I (Thompson 1992: 302-303).
Such economic conditions were not conducive to constructing a
unified 'national' order. Moreover, the pluralized and multi-linguistic
diversity of the region acted against a centralized unified 'national'
social structure. The collapse of Egyptian hegemony in the region did
not lead to 'national' unity but rather to centrifugal competition
between the Iron II cities and their hinterlands (e.g. Ashkelon, Gaza,
Hazor, Gezer, Lachish, Megiddo, Jerusalem, etc.). Indeed the archaeo-
logical evidence precludes any transregional political structures in the
highlands and any coherent sense of unity of the population prior to
the building of Samaria (Thompson 1992: 306-307, 409-12). The Late
Bronze-Iron I transition is not sufficient of itself to account for the
distinctiveness which was to develop into the unique character of the
'Israelites' of the exilic period. The Iron II (Assyrian) period was
critical in generating this 'national' identity.
Unless one postulates the displacement of the entire indigenous
population by the entry of an altogether foreign society into Palestine,
such as that broadly predicated in the Joshua narrative, the search for
Israelite origins must respect the diversity of the indigenous popula-
tion of the region. The political entities of the regional states of Israel
and Judah, which emerged as part of the new order of the Assyrian
Empire, incorporated a wide range of diverse groups. The new Iron
Age 1-11 settlements in the Palestinian hill country accommodated
descendants of the inhabitants of the Late Bronze highland towns, eco-
nomic refugees from the lowlands devastated by drought, indigenous
non-sedentary pastoralists of the region, transhumant pastoralists from
the steppe and possibly some of the immigrants from coastal Syria,
Anatolia and the Aegean. Moreover, the establishment of the regional
state of Judah added to the population mix, since it now included
within its territory the indigenous population of the Shephelah with its
roots in the Bronze Age, some admixture from the southern coast of
Philistia, the mixed population of steppe dwellers, the Arabs associ-
ated with overland trade in the northern Negev, the long-standing
population of the Jerusalem saddle and Ayyalon Valley and the multi-
cultural population of Jerusalem itself. The predication of Israelite
ethnic distinctiveness at this period is illusory, a fact reflected in the
complexity of linguistic differentiations and affiliations within
Palestinian languages and dialects in the first millennium (see
Thompson 1992: 334-37).
The Bible's portrayal of a United Monarchy during the tenth cen-
tury is an unlikely scenario, since the conditions for such regional
power did not exist until the expansion of the Assyrian Empire. The
advent of the Assyrians converted the state of Israel into the province
of Samaria and contributed further to a mixture of population.
Population transfer was part of the process of Assyrian imperial con-
trol, as it had been in Ancient Egypt, Babylon and the Hittite world
early in the second millennium. It was the purpose of the Assyrian
king to bring all peoples under the universal authority of Ashur. Mass
deportation of subject populations took different forms (one-way
deportations to Assyrian cities; deportations to areas from which
others had been deported; and the scattered settlement of a transferred
population to a variety of places), and in all may have resulted in the
dislocation of over a million people.
21
With the fall of Samaria, much
of Israel's population was resettled in Assyria, Media and Northern
Syria, and partially replaced by groups from Northern Syria, Babylon,
21. The reasons for the deportations were varied (punishment for resistance;
staving off rebellion; creating dependent and therefore loyal subjects; military con-
scription; slave labour, etc.), but also, in some cases at least, deportation offered an
improvement in the living standards of those deported, giving them freedom from
their former oppressors, and land, property and protection in the new place of settle-
ment (Oded 1979: 47-48).
Elam and Arabia. Although Jerusalem survived Sennacherib's assault,
he claims to have deported parts of the population of 46 villages of
Judah.
The transfer of population was continued by the Babylonians and
Persians, who inherited Assyria's well-established imperial structures.
Population deportation and replacement by foreign peoples through-
out Judea followed Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of Jerusalem. The
Persian texts, in particular, represent Cyrus as understanding the
restoration of the peoples and their gods as the primary function of
empire. His successors determined to centralize their control by a
'restoration' of the indigenous traditions of subject peoples (see
Thompson 1992: 346-51, 418). This period is the most likely context
for the biblical narrative of Genesis-Kings.
The Literary Form of the Accounts of Israelite Settlement of the Land
The biblical accounts of the changes in the Late Bronze-Iron Age
transition present a picture with which the abundant extra-biblical
evidence, archaeological and textual, does not cohere. Moreover, it is
surprising that Joshua, whose part in the conquest is central, occupies
so little attention in the Bible.
22
In addition to the difficulties of har-
monizing the archaeological evidence with the narrative of Joshua,
other factors suggest that the account is something other than a record
22. He is a minor figure in the Pentateuch and is not counted among the heroes of
the early history of the people. Exod. 18.8 brings him on stage as Moses' military
assistant and elsewhere as his companion (Exod. 24.13; 32.17). He is subordinate to
Caleb in Num. 14.24, 30, and a secondary figure in Num. 13.18 and Deut. 32.44.
Even in Deuteronomy his role is minor. 1 Sam. 12 names Moses and Aaron (vv. 6-
8), Jacob (v. 8), Jerubbaal and Barak, Jephthah, Samson (v. 11) and Samuel
(vv. 18-22). Nehemiah 9 recalls Abram-Abraham (v. 7) and Moses (v. 14). Joshua
is not mentioned in Ps. 105, which names Abraham, the children of Jacob (v. 6),
Isaac and Jacob (v. 9), Joseph (v. 17) and Moses and Aaron (v. 26). Ps. 106 names
Moses and Aaron (v. 16) and Phinehas (v. 30). Moreover, the exploits for which he
might be especially remembered (the fall of Jericho, the capture of Ai, the division of
the land and the covenant at Shechem) are not mentioned elsewhere in the Bible.
Even in the so-called deuteronomistic history (apart from the book of Joshua), refer-
ence to Joshua is scant (Judg. 1.1; 2.6-9; I Kgs 16.34). In the post-exilic period he
is mentioned only in 1 Chron. 7.27 (without comment), and only briefly in
Neh. 8.17. It is only in the late period that Joshua and his deeds are mentioned in
some detail (Sir. 46.1-8; cf. 2 Esdr. 7.37; 1 Mace. 2.55, as well as Acts 7.45 and
Heb. 4.8).
of what happened in the past. Younger's comparison with conquest
accounts in Assyrian, Hittite and Egyptian suggests that Joshua 9-12 is
structured on a transmission code similar to that of ancient Near
Eastern royal inscriptions (1990: 253-65).
More generally, several arguments force one to question the histori-
cal reliability of the Genesis-Joshua traditions. The predication of a
'Golden Age' in the remote past in which people enjoyed intimacy
with the deities and lived to fabulous old age is a commonplace in
antiquity. The primacy of the divine activity within human affairs,
frequently in the form of miraculous interventions, is characteristic of
ancient literature in general. The Genesis-Joshua narrative is replete
with conventional story-telling techniques (see further Miller and
Hayes 1986: 58-60). Faced with a range of historical improbabilities,
the critical historian, sensitive to the relationship between the biblical
narrative and historicity, seeks to construct a history of origins based
on all available information, literary and archaeological, and also a
scenario which accounts for the creation of the narrative of origins.
Developments within general historical scholarship confirm that all
historiography is ideological (e.g. Veyne 1984: 31-46; White 1978:
121-34). Genesis-2 Kings (creation to exile) is a fabricated history of
origins using all available sources, including folk traditions and leg-
ends, which consolidated group identity in the present by fashioning
its imagined origins in a distant past. This literary creation, reflecting
the religious perspectives of the writer(s), invoked the God of the
patriarchs, the wilderness and conquest, and the golden age of a puta-
tive united monarchy. It postulated unique religious origins for the
people in their having been chosen by and invited into covenantal
relationship with Yahweh, from which derived their religious tradi-
tions (Torah, religious festivity, priesthood, etc.), as well as the legit-
imacy of their possession of the land of Canaan (Gen. 12-Deut. 34).
This was done within the broader framework of the origins of other
peoples and of the other elements of the cosmos (Gen. 1-11). The
progenitors of the newly emerging society had taken possession of the
land promised by Yahweh and consolidated their control over it
(Joshua and Judges), but their kings failed to watch over their king-
doms (1 Sam.-2 Kgs).
The hypothesis that Genesis-2 Kings constitutes one literary work
which reworked earlier traditions, and the recent concentration on the
literary character of the biblical narratives (e.g. Alter and Kermode
1987; Exum and Clines 1993) have deflected attention from the ques-
tion of historicity and helped to focus scholastic attention on authorial
Tendenz. Some see Genesis-Kings as punctuated by a quartet of
themes: the apostasy of the people; an invitation to repentance; a
determination to obey; and a guarantee of salvation. However, while
the individual elements of the composition have been combined to give
the finished literary product a certain unity and coherence, leaving
many 'rough edges', the dissonances in, and composite character of
the Genesis-Kings narrative are well recognized.
23
The presence of
variants and repetitions, as well as what appears to be the imposition
of a structure which is built on a chronological succession of biogra-
phies of heroes (Adam, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, et al.), should alert
the reader to the reality that multiple, diverse theologies and perspec-
tives exist side by side within the text (see Thompson 1992: 353-69).
This calls into question the notion of a single hand with an univocal
ideological tendency. Insistence on a fixed, unitary theology and moti-
vation of the deuteronomistic author reflects more the aspirations of
the modern reader familiar with finely chiselled modern books with
their redactional consistency than the reality of the achievement of the
deuteronomistic tradent. The coexistence within the so-called
deuteronomistic history of a variety of conflicting perspectives should
caution against easy assumptions that selective coherent patterns dis-
cerned by a modern reader constitute the ideological Tendenz of the
author.
Period of composition
Most scholars agree that the major part of Genesis-Kings is a product
of the seventh century, during the reign of King Josiah, but revised in
the light of the cataclysmic events of the fall of Jerusalem, the collapse
of the monarchy and the destruction of the Temple in 586 BC and the
subsequent exile to Babylon (e.g. Blum 1990; Van Seters 1975).
Moreover, some recent scholarship argues for a later date for the final
redaction: Lemche (1991) and T. Thompson (1974: 10; 1992: 356),
Garbini (1988: 176-77) in the Hellenistic Period, with P. Davies
23. For example, for our purposes, was Hebron captured by Joshua (Josh.
10.36)? or Caleb (Josh. 15.13-14)? or by Judah (Judg. 1.9-10)?; if Joshua con-
quered the whole of Canaan, destroying its inhabitants (Josh. 10.40-42), and settling
the tribes in the allotted places (Josh. 13-22), how does one explain the account in
Judg. 1 which describes ongoing struggles between the Israelites and the Canaanites?
(1995: 149-55) suggesting the Hasmonean period for the 'normativi-
zation' of the writings.
The so-called deuteronomistic writer(s) attempted to explain the
trauma of the destruction and exile through the medium of not only
recent history, but of that of the distant past as well. History was con-
sidered to provide causal explanations for current disasters in an inti-
mate, paradigmatic causal link between the past and the present
(Lemche 1995: 182-83). This was not history in the Ranke sense of
nineteenth-century European historiography, with its attention to what
really happened, but an attempt to give a theological interpretation of
the past according to particular theological standpoints. Rather than
lay the blame for the devastation at the feet of their God, the reason
they propose for the collapse of their vital institutions was the failure
of the people to be faithful to the covenant. While the monarchy
material preserves traces of historical events which really happened,
the Hexateuch component is mythical and legendary.
It is difficult to be precise about the date of the final composition of
the book of Joshua. It has been suggested that it is a series of fictions
which were created in order to create an all-Israel identity after the
722 fall of the northern kingdom (see further Lemche 1985: 206-85).
Others argue that it was produced in the seventh century, during the
reign of Josiah, and revised during the exile in the light of the events
of 586 BC. The historical Joshua, an Ephraimite (Josh. 19.50; 24.30),
was perhaps a local hero who became the locus for the deuterono-
mistic ideal reconstruction of early Israel. The biblical Joshua is to a
large extent a literary creation, a carbon copy of Moses, and, as the
ideal Israelite leader, a prototype of the ideal kings, David, Hezekiah
and especially Josiah (Nelson 1981a: 124; 1981b: 540). The book of
Joshua attributes everything to its hero, just as all the laws are attri-
buted to Moses. The book is a type of historical-theological fiction,
presenting a picture of the ideal Israel under ideal leadership, with the
profound conviction that obeying the Law was the sure way of main-
taining possession of Yahweh's land (Coogan 1989: 112). Garbini
argues that the book of Joshua reflects a historical situation markedly
later than the exile and an ideology which it is difficult to date before
the third century BC (Garbini 1988: xv).
The portrayal of Israelite origins in the pentateuchal traditions and
in the deuteronomistic history are best evaluated in terms of the
period of their composition. The decision of Nabonidus to 'restore'
the lost cult of Sin (the stelae of Nabonidus and his mother) suggests
to Thompson a comprehensive context for the composition of Genesis-
Kings. Nabonidus strove to bring people from Babylon, Syria and
Egypt to share in the restoration as citizens of and heirs to the for-
gotten traditions of Haran. Sin was identified with the God of heaven,
the ultimate divinity of the neo-Babylonian world. In the deportation
policy perfected by the Persians, Marduk called upon Cyrus to restore
both gods and peoples to their homes (cf. 2 Chron. 36.22-23; Ezra
1.1-4; cf. Isa. 45.1-25). 2 Chron. 36.22-23 and Ezra 1.1-4 identify
elohe shamayim with Yahweh, the name of the long-neglected indi-
genous god of the former state of Israel. Ezra put Cyrus in a role
analogous to that of Nabonidus: Cyrus was charged with 'restoring'
the ancient cult of Yahweh at Jerusalem and 'returning' the exiles to
their former 'homeland'. Thompson asserts that we are not dealing
with returned exiles being restored to their former homeland and the
worship of their ancestral god, but with the creation of a new people
with a new cult, centred on a new temple administered by the Persian
administrator (Neh. 1-11). Whoever these people who were to be
transported to Palestine were, they certainly were not the Israelite
population of long-lost Israel returning to 'Eretz Israel' from bitter
exile. Continuity with the past was provided in Ezra's narrative by the
device that the 'returnees' brought with them the great treasures of the
old temple of Yahweh (Ezra 1.5-11; cf. Dan. 1.2; 5.2-4), although,
according to other formulations, these treasures had long been looted
and broken up (2 Kgs 24.13; 25.13-17; cf. 2 Chron. 36.19 [see
Carroll 1992: 81]). With the help of the Persians, these people
deported from Babylon and other areas of the new empire determined
to establish the cult of elohe shamayim, the very essence of the divine
throughout the empire, but who, in Palestine, went by the name
Yahweh (Thompson 1992: 418).
The imposition of this new centralized administration, centred on
the worship of Yahweh in a restructured Jerusalem, posed a substan-
tial threat to the order of the indigenous people in Palestine, long
accustomed to the previous Assyrian and Babylonian systems (see
Ezra 4-6). Carroll argues that the second Temple community was to
be constituted by 'the people of the deportation' only, the 'good figs'
who had been deported with Jechoniah (597 BC): they only were 'the
sacred enclave', 'the holy community' which must keep itself apart
from the people of the land. 'Much-in some sense perhaps all-of
the literature of the Hebrew Bible must be regarded as the documen-
tation of their claims to the land and as a reflection of their ideology'
(Carroll 1992: 85; cf. Thompson 1992: 419). The propagandistic
Persian vocabulary of 'restoration' and 'return' should not be used to
underpin the categories of pre-exilic, exilic and post-exilic as accurate
delineations of the history of 'Israel'. The formers of the biblical tra-
dition, by putting themselves within the category of those 'redeemed'
from exile, identified themselves with the victims of the Assyrian and
Babylonian deportation practices. The pre-exilic period of a lost
Jerusalem and Judah and Samaria and Israel, then, became a lost glory
to be restored.
Whatever coherence or 'national ethnicity' Palestine had ever devel-
oped, it did not survive the dislocations and displacements of the sixth
century.
24
'The Iron Age population of the Palestinian highlands
entered the Persian period radically transformed' (Thompson 1992:
415):
By the end of the sixth-century, Palestine was without unity or any
meaningful coherence. Ethnically, linguistically, religiously, economically
and politically it lacked cohesion. Its elite had been transported to serve
imperial aims, and the core of its populations was scattered and divided
among incoherent groupings of indigenous and resettled peoples
(Thompson 1992: 421).
The literary paradigm of the 'Babylonian Exile' provided a context
for the self-understanding of the people of Yahweh as a saved rem-
nant.25 The trauma of exile gave the identity of 'Israel' to the newly-
formed tradition. In the Persian period, the new people acquired the
identity of 'Israel' through association with this remnant, whether
24. The terms ethnicity and nation, although widely used in the discipline, are of
dubious value. The concept of ethnos is a political rather than anthropological aspect
of human society-a fiction created by writers (T.L. Thompson's paper, 'Hidden
Histories and the Problem of Ethnicity in Palestine', delivered at the Jerusalem Day
Symposium, Amman 1996-to be published). The application of the term nation to
the societies of the Bronze and Iron Ages is an anachronism. Moreover, the concepts
of nation and nationality themselves are cultural artefacts with roots in eighteenth-
century Europe. Indeed, the term nationalism was not used widely until the end of
the nineteenth century (Anderson 1991: 4).
25. The inclusive monotheism of the Torah corresponds to the Babylonian heav-
enly supreme deity (Sin at Haran) and the Persian universal God of heaven and cre-
ator of all (Ahura Mazda). Under Xerxes, the inclusivity yielded to exclusivity,
which is echoed by the nationalistic proclivities of a later Y ahwism.
one's ancestors came from Babylon, Nineveh or Egypt, or had always
been in Palestine:
To identify with the true Israel was to assert one's roots in exile, and
through it in the lost glory of the Davidic empire, in the conquest with
Joshua, in the wilderness with Moses, in the exodus from Egypt, as a ger
with Abraham and with Yahweh at creation (Thompson 1992: 422).
The linguistic and literary reality of the biblical tradition is folk-
loristic and corresponds to no reality at any period of history:
The concept of benei Israel: a people and an ethnicity, bound in union and
by ties of family and common descent, possessing a common past and
oriented towards a common futuristic religious goal, is a reflection of no
sociopolitical entity of the historical state of Israel of the Assyrian period,
nor is it an entirely realistic refraction of the post-state Persian period in
which the biblical tradition took its shape as a cohering self understanding
of Palestine's population. It rather has its origin and finds its meaning
within the development of the tradition and within the utopian religious
perceptions that the tradition created, rather than within the real world of
the past that the tradition restructured in terms of a coherent ethnicity and
religion (Thompson 1992: 422).
Conclusion
Twentieth-century biblical scholarship has shifted from viewing much
of the biblical narrative as simple history to concentrating on its
authors as historiographers, whose reconstruction of the past reflected
their own religious and political ideologies. However, no amount of
special pleading is sufficient to justify the classification 'history' for
the biblical narrative of Israelite origins. Pace Brettler' s strained
attempts to retain the term for much of the biblical narrative (1995:
10-12), no 'didactic history' which 'patterned the past after the pre-
sent', or even fabricated the past for allegedly honest paraenetic
motives should be confused with the discipline of history whose crite-
ria are accuracy and adequacy of portrayal of the past, independently
confirmed where possible.
26
History proper must be distinguished
26. Brettler argues that the Chronicler wrote a type of 'didactic history' which
'patterned the past after the present', in which what might be learned from the event
or pattern rather than the historicity of the event itself was important. Such a work
ought to be read in terms of the meaning which the narrative conveys rather than as a
record of past events (1995: 41). Brettler is at pains to retain the biblical writers
within the category of historians. Although the Deuteronomist modified and diverged
from a series of ideologically motivated assertions about the past (cf.
Thompson 1992: 404-405).
Biblical scholarship can include Genesis-Kings within the genre of
historiography only by a tortuous expansion of the definition. Such a
designation confuses the world of historiography, which deals with the
true and real past with that of fictional literature which reflects the
conceptual world of the author. Genesis-Kings, which preserves frag-
mentary sources emanating from many authors reflecting diverse
ideologies and retaining seemingly disharmonious tale variations, does
not merit the genre of self-conscious historiography as understood in
antiquity or today. The so-called deuteronomistic tradent appears to
have been driven by an antiquarian's desire to preserve the diversity
of what was old while giving it a loosely chronological catalogue of a
sequence of great periods (see Thompson 1992: 373-78).
The rejection of the historicity of the patriarchal narratives in the
seminal works ofT. Thompson (1974) and Van Seters (1975) is now
part of the scholarly consensus that the narratives do not record events
of the patriarchal period, but are retrojections into a past about which
the writers knew little, which reflect the authorial Tendenzen at the
later period of composition. The pentateuchal narratives are best
understood as common traditions of Judah sometime after 600 BC.
They should not be used as historiographical sources for the period
before 1000 BC (Lemche 1985: 385-86) and should be used only very
rarely for the period of the monarchy itself (Thompson 1992: 95).
While ancient Israelite historiographers may not have been much
different from the later Jewish rabbis, for whom 'there was no ques-
tion more meaningless or boring than the purpose and usefulness of an
exact description of what actually transpired' (Moshe David Herr, in
Brettler 1995: 2), the questions concerning what, or whether God's
promise of land to an Abraham and his descendants actually happened
are of critical importance.
Against the background of the virtually unanimous scholarly scepti-
cism concerning the historicity of the patriarchal narratives, it is
unacceptable to cleave to the view that God made the promise of pro-
geny and land to Abraham after the fashion indicated in Genesis 15.
Literary and historical investigation make it more likely that such
from his sources radically and 'fabricated' history, he is excused because he honestly
believed his ideology, and is conceded to be 'writing history like all other historians'
(1995: 78).
promises emanated from within the ideologies of a much later period,
perhaps that of the attempt to reconstitute national and religious iden-
tity in the wake of the Babylonian exile. Nevertheless, despite their
legendary character, both Church and Synagogue continue to treat the
patriarchal narratives as though they were a record of what actually
happened. The scholarly community for its part evades the problem
by contenting itself with studying the texts rather than the events
which lie behind them (see Brettler 1995: 1-2; Neusner 1990: 247; cf.
Thompson 1992).
Much of the scholastic reaction against viewing the Abraham narra-
tive as late and largely legendary is motivated by 'confessional' con-
siderations.27 This disposition springs from a fear that any deviation
from 'historical' truth is a dilution of, and derogation from religious
truth, as if history (in the sense of a record of what really happened)
were the only literary genre worthy, or even capable of communicat-
ing religious truth.
28
It is as if factual history were the only genre
which could validate a religious appreciation of the narrative of the
call of Abraham and the promise of progeny and land: Christian faith
and Jewish belief demand no less. However, an authentic biblical faith
must respect the variety of literary forms of the biblical narrative and
acknowledge that the narrative of the folkloric and legendary 'events'
of the past functions as an honourable medium for the communication
of truth, albeit not historiography. To abandon one's attachment to the
historicity of the events of the narrative in the light of compelling evi-
dence is not to forsake belief: 'To learn that what we have believed is
not what we should have believed is not to lose our faith' (Thompson
1974: 328).
The narrative of the book of Deuteronomy does not care much for
the indigenous population. The notion of the land as the gift of God
must reckon with the fact that, invariably, one takes the land from its
original inhabitants. The dream of colonizers customarily exacts a
nightmare for the indigenous population and, pace P. Miller (1969:
27. 'Without Abraham, a major block in the foundations of both Judaism and
Christianity is lost; a fictional Abraham ... could supply no rational evidence for
faith .. .Inasmuch as the Bible claims uniqueness, and the absolute of divine revela-
tion, the Abraham narratives deserve a positive, respectful approach; any other risks
destroying any evidence they afford' (Millard 1992: I, 40).
28. E.g., 'Si Ia foi historique d'lsrael n'est pas fondee dans l'histoire, cette foi
est erronee, et Ia notre aussi' (de Vaux 1965: 7).
465) and others, it is not morally acceptable to predicate the land as
one's own even 'by the grace of God'. It is some comfort to be res-
cued from a literalist reading of Deuteronomy, since such a reading
predicates a god who shares the predictable dispositions of a ghetto
community in an exclusivist, ethnicist, xenophobic and militaristic
fashion. While modem biblical scholarship is united in concluding that
the narrative of the Pentateuch does not correspond to what actually
happened (Whybray 1995: 141), it is not acceptable to allow thenar-
ratives to escape an evaluation based on criteria of morality, especially
in the light of the use to which they have been put. Subsequent use of
the pentateuchal narrative and the so-called deuteronomistic history,
especially in the liturgy, invites new generations of hearers/readers to
embrace the values of separateness appropriate to (a section of) the
Israelite community. One would hope that the generations of partici-
pants in the liturgy would be stimulated by these texts rather less ener-
getically than were the Crusaders, the mediaeval theologians justifying
the conquest of the New World, the Pilgrim Fathers, the South
African Calvinists and, most recently, the more enthusiastic religious
Zionists.
A historiography of Israelite origins based solely, or primarily on
the biblical narratives is an artificial construct determined by certain
religious motivations obtaining at a time long post-dating any veri-
fiable evidence of events. The way forward is to write a compre-
hensive, independent history of the Near East into which the Israelite
history of origins should be fitted. While there is nothing like a schol-
arly consensus in the array of recent studies on Israel's origins,
29
2 9. In their attempts to construct a history of Israel, Soggin ( 1984) and Miller and
Hayes (1986) mark a departure from the confidence of earlier scholarship in their
scepticism concerning the historicity of the biblical traditions of the pre-monarchic
period. They question our ability to say anything sure about Israel's origins and
concur in the judgment that little can be learned from the Bible on the subject, and, in
particular, that the traditions of Genesis-2 Kings are of limited use for that purpose.
At the level of reception, the societal contexts of modern historians of Israelite origins
are reflected in their work. One detects in German historiography of Israel a preoccu-
pation with the nation state after the model of Bismarck's unification of Germany. In
American scholarship, the recent history of the 'pilgrim fathers' stressed the model of
a chosen people in search of a promised land. In the case of Israeli historiographers,
these emphases find an echo in terms of the origins of the modern State of Israel. In
all three regions, the stress has been on Israelite unity and the role of leading
personalities (see Coote and Whitelam 1987: 173-77).
there is virtual unanimity that the model of tribal conquest as narrated
in Joshua 1-12 is untenable (see, e.g., Thompson 1987: 11-40). Leav-
ing aside the witness of the Bible, we have no evidence that there was
a Hebrew conquest. Moreover, there is a virtual scholarly consensus
that the biblical narratives which describe the conquest-settlement
period come from authors writing many centuries later than the
'events' described (whether in the exilic, or post-exilic periods), who
had no reliable information about that distant past.
The Exodus-Settlement accounts reflect a particular genre, the goal
of which was to inculcate religious values rather than merely present
empirical facts. The modern historian must distinguish between the
actual history of the peoples and the history of their self-understand-
ing. The archaeology of Palestine must be a primary source for trac-
ing the origins of Israel, and it shows a picture quite different from
that of the religiously motivated writings (Ahlstrom 1993: 28-29).
The archaeological evidence points in an altogether different direction
from that suggested by Joshua 1-12. It suggests a sequence of periods
marked by a gradual and peaceful coalescence of disparate peoples
into a group of highland dwellers whose achievement of a new sense
of unity culminated only with the entry of the Assyrian administra-
tion. The Iron I Age settlements on the central hills of Palestine, from
which the later kingdom of Israel developed, reflect continuity with
Canaanite culture, and repudiate any ethnic distinction between
'Canaanites' and 'Israelites'. Israel's origins were within Canaan not
outside it. There was neither invasion from outside nor revolution
within. Moreover, the 'Israel' of the period of the biblical narrative
represented a multiplicity of ethnic identities, reflecting the variety of
provenances in the Late Bronze-Iron Age transition and that brought
about by three waves of systematic, imperial population transfer and
admixture (Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian). The predication of
Israelite ethnic distinctiveness prior to the Persian period is illusory,
and the unity of the biblical benei Israel is a predilection of the bibli-
cal authors rather than the reality reflecting a commonality of ethnic
identity or communal experience.
The contemporary needs of the final redactors of the biblical narra-
tive determined and dominated their ideological stance, which we may
wish to call religious or pastoral, and issued in an ideal model for the
future which they justified on the basis of its retrojection into the past
of Israelite origins, the details of which only the surviving conflicting
folkloric traditions provided. If we excuse the biblical writers for
their misrepresentation of the past on the basis of their paraenetic
motives for their own circumstances, we ought not to be equally
indulgent with theologians and Church-Synagogue people for whom
the evidence of what happened in the past is more reliable. The leg-
endary account of Joshua 1-12 offers no legitimizing paradigm for
land plunder in the name of God, or by anyone arrogating to himself
his authority. Indeed, the extra-biblical evidence promotes a respect
for the evolution of human culture, rather than for a process that can
deal with change only by way of violent destruction.
While generations of religious people have derived both profit and
pleasure from the retelling of the biblical stories, the victims of the
colonialist plunder we have examined are likely to be less sanguine in
their attitude to the texts, and would welcome any attempt to distin-
guish between the apparent ethnocentricity of the God of Genesis-
Kings and the paranaetic and political intentions of authors writing
much later. A major epistemological question arises. Do texts which
belong to the genre of folkloric epic or legend, rather than of a his-
tory which describes what actually happened, confer legitimacy on the
'Israelite' possession of the land and on subsequent forms of colonial-
ism which looked to the biblical paradigm, understood as factual his-
tory, for legitimization later? Does a judgment which is based on the
premise that the genre of the justifying text is history in that sense not
dissolve when it is realized that the text belongs to the genre of myths
of origin, which are encountered in virtually every society, and
which, as we have seen, were deployed in the service of particular
ideologies?
Chapter 7
REHABILITATING THE BIBLE:
TOWARDS A MORAL READING OF THE BIBLE
The Land in Modern Biblical Scholarship: Status Quaestionis
When one considers that there are some 1705 references in the
English Bible to land, it is surprising that the theme has attracted so
little scholastic attention. In his 1943 pioneering essay, Gerhard von
Rad noted that despite the importance of the theme in the Hexateuch,
no thorough investigation of it had been made (1966: 79). But even by
1962 The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible had no article on the
theme. The Peake Commentary (1962) has two references to the land
in its index. Kittel-Friedrich's Worterbuch allots just four pages to the
theme. The index of The New Jerome Biblical Commentary ( 1989)
lists only three places in which the theme is dealt with. However,
W.D. Davies and Walter Brueggemann have written major and influ-
ential works on the subject.
Davies's 197 4 study was written at the request of friends in
Jerusalem, who just before the 1967 war, urged his support for the
cause of Israel (1982: xiii). His second was written under the direct
impact of that war: 'Here I have concentrated on what in my judge-
ment must be the beginning for an understanding of this conflict: the
sympathetic attempt to comprehend the Jewish tradition' (1982: xiii-
xiv). Its updated version was written because of the mounting need to
understand its theme in the light of events in the Middle East, culmi-
nating in the Gulf War and its aftermath (1991: xiii). While Davies
considers the topic from virtually every conceivable perspective in his
1974 and 1982 works, little attention is given to broadly moral and
human rights' issues.
1
1. Consistent with virtually all biblical scholarship, Alfaro's survey (1978) does
not deal with the moral question of the fate of those already inhabiting the land.
From his own experience of urban life in the USA, Walter
Brueggemann sees human culture in search of a place and the Bible as
concerned primarily with being displaced and yearning for a place
(1977: 2). Land is a central, if not the central theme of biblical faith,
and might be a way of organizing biblical theology (1977: 3).
Brueggemann's reading of the Bible is refracted through a concentra-
tion on the land. The significant moment before entry into the
Promised Land is an occasion for a profound pause: the gift of the
land is sola gratia (p. 48). He bypasses the treatment to be meted out
to the indigenous inhabitants. At one point he affirms, 'What is asked
is not courage to destroy enemies, but courage to keep Torah' (p. 60),
avoiding the fact that in the biblical narrative 'keeping Torah'
involves accepting also its xenophobic and destructive militarism. Yet
he acknowledges that 'the land of promise is never an eagerly waiting
vacuum anticipating Israel. It is always filled with Canaanites' (p. 68).
He evades the moral issue, however, by assuring us that that is how
the promise comes.
For Brueggemann Judaism's attachment to the land could find
expression only in the formation of a modern nation state, of what-
ever complexion. While he appears to concede 'Arab' rights and
grievances in theory, he shows no appetite for addressing them. He
does not offer any critique of the moral character of the values
implied in the biblical account. Murder, killing, destruction, expulsion
and generally horrendous human suffering are the inevitable price one
pays in pursuit of the goals in which the biblical narrative of land is
set, when read in a naively literalist way. In such a reading, the
divinely approved, divinely mandated outrages keep the name of the
tribal god alive, but at the cost of the death of a God whose morality
transcends the particularist, the ethnicist, the xenophobic and the
militaristic.
W. Davies accepts as epistemologically tenable the view that what
Jews believe to have happened constitutes a fact of undeniable histori-
cal and theological significance. That belief itself, he claims, has
become a historical datum: 'Its reality as an undeniable aspect of
Orlinsky bemoans the neglect of the land in treatments of the biblical concept of
covenant ( 1985) and treats the biblical text as though it were a record of what actually
happened. He pays no attention to the indigenous inhabitants. His study proceeds
with significant attention to questions of Hebrew syntax, but with none to questions
of morality and ethics.
7. Rehabilitating the Bible 255
Judaism cannot be ignored' (1991: 97). The promise of land was so
reinterpreted from age to age that it became a living power in the life
of the people. What was important was its formative, dynamic, semi-
nal force in the history of Israel, rather than its historicity. The
legend acquired its own reality (1991: 5-6). The sense of possession
became a determinative reality, whether or not the gift of land ever
had any historical support. In other words, whether or not the land
was ever promised by God, the narrative and its underlying traditions
justify such an ascription.
Davies traces the theological conviction that there was an unsever-
able connection between Israel, the land and its God from the early
Israelite period to the modem. He does acknowledge that the very dis-
cussion of the land theme would not have been possible but for the
conscious and unconscious pressure of Zionism. However, he insists
that neat dichotomies between the religious and political factions in
Zionism are falsifications of their rich and mutually accommodating
diversity. He claims that the often silent but ubiquitous presence of the
religious tradition won the day. He concludes, 'To understand the
secular character of Zionism and to overemphasize its undeniable
religious dimensions is to lay oneself open to the temptation of giving
to the doctrine of The Land a significance which in much of Judaism
would be a distortion' (Davies 1991: 76).
Davies deals with the criticism that 'the land' as a piece of real
estate is anachronistic and a superstition unworthy of serious consid-
eration. He has no sympathy for those who hold that the land, together
with the other doctrine of 'chosenness/election', are especially primi-
tive expressions of the unacceptable particularism of the Jewish faith.
He defends the Jewish claim to territory because, without such terri-
tory, there is a loss of security, stimulation, identity and political self-
determination. Christianity, he claims, substituted for the holiness of
place the holiness of Christ, with life 'in Christ' replacing life 'in the
Land' as the highest blessing (Davies 1991: 90). He does not appear to
have been swayed by the view that the way of Torah, in the emerging
rabbinic movement, enabled each individual to bring holiness into
daily life, no longer by means of the Temple. There was a conscious
discontinuity: Torah was the basis for a new piety. Davies bemoans
the spiritualization of the notion of land in both Christianity and
Judaism and lauds the sense of rootedness which the materiality of the
concept keeps alive.
Davies excluded from his concern, 'What happens when the under-
standing of the Promised Land in Judaism conflicts with the claims of
the traditions and occupancy of its other peoples?' He excuses himself
by saying that to engage that issue would demand another volume
( 1991: xv ), without indicating his intention to embark upon such an
enterprise. Similarly, at the end of his 1981 article (p. 96), he claimed
that it was impossible to discuss that issue. His 1991 work does include
a symposium in which Krister Stendahl saw Zionism as a liberation
movement, and the State of Israel as the fulfilment of biblical promise
(in Davies 1991: 111-12). Arthur Hertzberg insists that Judaism
cannot survive in its full stature in the diaspora, since the bulk of the
613 mitzvot can be observed only in Israel. That religious insight, he
claims, is the prime source of modern Zionism (in Davies 1991: 106).
R.J. Zwi Werblowsky also gives no indication of moral perturbation
deriving from the implications of the Torah-driven piety implied in
Zionism. David Noel Freedman hints at Davies' omission of the moral
dimension of the treatment of the subject:
Even the longed-for guidance for the thinking of serious people, puzzled
and disturbed by the apparent historical consequences of the doctrine of
The Land in the lives of peoples and lands in the Near East today, almost
a re-enactment of the first Exodus, conquest, and settlement, may be too
much to ask (Freedman, in Davies 1991: 104).
Kenneth Cragg gets to the heart of the moral predicament. He points
to the perpetual crisis which arises when the granting of covenanted
territory to a covenanted people through a covenanted story conflicts
with the identity of other inhabitants, to which Davies refers only at a
tangent (in Davies 1991: 101).
For Jacob Neusner, the obsession with the land in Genesis to Joshua
and the principal historical and prophetic books is explained by the
fact that they all reached their final form outside the land and in con-
sequence of the loss of the land. But the Babylonian Talmud makes it
clear that one can practise the holy way of life anywhere, any time.
Neusner' s contrast between the Babylonian Talmud and the theology
of the Mishnah, from which it derives, is telling. Whereas for the
Mishnah, 'Israel can be Israel only in The Land of Israel' (in Davies
1991: 108), the Babylonian Talmud ignores the whole of the
Mishnah's repertoire of laws on cultic cleanness (except for the one on
woman's menstrual uncleanness), as well as the first division of the
Mishnah on agriculture. In transmitting the Mishnah, the great sages
of Babylonia converted it into something relevant for the diaspora.
Neusner adds that American Jews today, faced with the claim that
normality is to live in the land and abnormality is to live abroad, do
what they want, amiably professing feelings of remorse and guilt
(Neusner, in Davies 1991: 109).
It is left to J.S. Whale to bring the moral question to the fore. His
criticism of Davies's indifference to the fate of the people who have to
pay the price for Israelite and Israeli seizure of the land is as devastat-
ing as it is polite. He notes that Davies 'must know that conquest is
always cruel, even when perpetrated by God's Elect; and that empire
is always huge robbery, whether Roman or British, Muslim or
Christian' (in Davies 1991: 116).
Davies added further reflections in response to the symposium. To
the criticism that he had not given due attention to the Holocaust, he
affirms that he justifies the State of Israel in terms of the Holocaust
(Davies 1991: 120). One wonders where the logic of his biblical thesis
would have led had the Holocaust not occurred. Davies acknowledges
that the land is not an absolute value in Judaism, and that the zeal of
devotees may be tempered by appeal to the primacy of the sanctity of
life within Judaism. However, he does not allow that principle to
express itself further. He settles for an accommodation of the two
people and a compromise as an utter necessity: land can be traded for
peace (Davies 1991: 130). But one must question how his earlier logic
could allow such a derogation from the divine mandate.
Davies takes the establishment of the pre-1967 Jewish State of Israel
in his stride. Only the post-1967 occupation is a problem. The colonial
plunder associated with the foundation of the State of Israel is above
reproach and appears to enjoy the same allegedly divinely sanctioned
legitimacy and mandate as the Joshua-led encroachment on the land.
One wonders whether Davies would be equally sanguine had white,
Anglo-Saxon Protestants or Catholics been among the displaced people
who paid the price for the enactment of the divine mandate. He shows
no concern for the fundamental injustice done to the Palestinian Arabs
by the encroachment on their land by Zionists and for the compensa-
tion that justice and morality demands. Despite the foundational plun-
der of 1948, Davies writes as if there were now a moral equivalence
between the dispossessed Palestinians and the dispossessor Zionists.
Davies moves smoothly from the religious motivation to live the
fullness of the Torah in the land of Israel to the conclusion of the
legitimacy of establishing a state, with all that that implies, especially
in an area already inhabited. Nor does the behaviour of the State of
Israel towards the Palestinian Arabs, both in the Occupied Territories
and Israel itself, and towards those it expelled from their homes mute
his sense of Bible-based propriety. He is guided by the principle that
whatever is apportioned to the people of Israel in their foundation
documents requires no further justification.
Davies concedes that things have changed with the emergence of the
State of Israel. The Zionists, he agrees, superseded the intentions of
the 'Lovers of Zion', who, having a 'mystical' relationship to the land,
were indifferent to whoever would assume political and military
responsibility for it. But he does not allow the clear evidence of colo-
nial Zionism to shake his fundamental satisfaction with his major
thesis, thereby playing down the real gap between his romanticized
biblicism and the reality of the disruption and social upheaval that
always attends 'ethnic cleansing'. While Davies's theology of land is
forced into confrontation with some of the realities of its implications
today, his sensitivity to issues of human rights and international law
and to the wider international political scene is not impressive. His
overall, somewhat confused position may be summed up as follows:
1. The State of Israel is justified in terms of the Holocaust.
2. Compromise is an utter necessity to accommodate the two
people (but, one might ask, by what biblical authority?).
3. Only the post-1967 occupation is a problem-the dislocation
of 1948 is accepted.
4. The desired life in the land has been possible only with the
aid of the despised life outside it.
5. Loyalty to the Torah is more precious than even the blessing
of living in the land-faith outside the land is possible, but
not outside the Torah.
Davies does not deal with the question of the dimensions of the land.
A number of items distinguish the scholastic treatment of the land.
The most distinctive aspect of the discourse is the virtual absence of
any sensitivity to the moral questions involved in one people dispos-
sessing others. The conventional discourse suffers from other serious
limitations:
1. Its writers settle for a synchronic reading of the biblical text
that does not address the significance of its provenance and
literary evolution.
2. They appear to accept on this one issue that the literary genre
of the biblical treatment of the origins of Israel is history-a
view which runs in the face of all serious scholarship.
3. They do not differentiate between the different stages in the
life of 'the people of Israel', for example, before occupation
of Canaan, during the period of the monarchy and before,
during and after exile.
4. They assume in most cases that one is dealing with a homoge-
neous people of Israel, ethnically, culturally and religiously
one at all periods.
5. They consider the biblical attitudes towards the land to be
above moral reproach, and make no value judgment on them.
6. They assume that the attitudes to land portrayed at one
(biblical) period have an automatic currency for quite a dif-
ferent one; in particular, that they automatically transfer to
that specific form of attachment to land which we know as
Zionism.
A more acceptable academic discourse requires that each of these
limitations be addressed with a particular sensitivity to moral issues
and a certain concern for the dispossessed. In the light of the biblical
exegesis discussed above, one speculates as to the relationship between
epistemology and the formation of character. A faith nourished on the
Bible as understood by the prevailing biblical scholarship conflicts
with universally agreed perspectives on human dignity and rights.
2
The failure to distinguish between the biblical narratives as story
and as history in the sense of informing about the past is no longer
acceptable. Scholars must abandon the security of considering the bib-
lical narrative as 'history', accept the consequences of respecting the
2. I shall discuss elsewhere the place of the Bible in the mainstream Christian
Zionism of Reinhold Niebuhr (see Fox 1987), Franklin Littell, Paul van Buren and
John Pawlikowski et al., and the biblical hermeneutics of Evangelical Christian
Zionism (see Wagner 1995). I shall discuss also the challenge to Zionism posed by
Jewish scholars, for example, Moshe Menuhin (1969), Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Elmer
Berger, Uri Davis, Marc Ellis and Deena Hurwitz (1992), and within Christian theo-
logical circles (e.g. Ruether and Ruether 1989; Ruether 1990), as well as from
Palestinian Liberation theologians (e.g. Ateek 1989; Rantisi 1990).
new evidence about the past and attempt to reconstruct religious doc-
trine which respects that evidence. Living with the imprecisions of a
reconstruction of the past is preferable to the security of embracing a
fictitious and unsustainable fabrication of it, particularly one which
legitimates colonial plunder. It will not be possible to put the old
paradigm of the unity of Bible and history together again (Thompson
1995: 697 -98), and we shall have to learn to live with ambiguity
(Redford 1992: 311). Any reconstruction of the Israelite past must
distinguish between the 'historical Israel' and 'biblical Israel', respect
the archaeological evidence and give due weight to the nature of the
biblical narrative, recognizing the ideological intentions of the
authors. The heated nature of the debate about possible reconstruc-
tions of 'ancient Israel' reflects the reality that one is not dealing
merely with objective scholarship in search of an elusive past, but that
one is enmeshed also in discussion about the legitimacy of develop-
ments in Palestine in our own time (see Whitelam 1996: 71-121).
Any discussion of the Bible must allow for a moral critique which
respects the discourse of human rights and international law to which
our generation is accustomed. I can only indicate here some ways
forward. But first we must acknowledge the problem.
The Moral Problem of the Land Traditions of the Bible
The indigenous peoples in the three regions we have examined have
no doubt about the link between religion and oppression and reserve
particular criticism for the Bible. The representative Andean and
American Indians who presented an open letter to Pope John-Paul II
when he visited Peru left him in no doubt about their assessment of
the role of the Bible in the destruction of their civilization. They
asked him to take back the Bible and give it to their oppressors.
3
A
saying in South Africa sums up a popular appraisal of the Bible in the
oppression of its indigenous population: 'When the white man came to
our country he had the Bible and we had the land. The white man said
to us, "Let us pray". After the prayer, the white man had the land and
we had the Bible.'
The Palestinian theologian Nairn Ateek reflects that whereas one
looks to the Bible for strength and liberation, it is used by some
3. Columbus regarded the discovery of the New World as a fulfilment of the
prophecy of Isaiah (Isa. 60.9, in Bonino 1975: 4-5).
Christians and Jews in a way which offers Palestinians slavery rather
than freedom, injustice rather than justice, and death to their national
and political life (1989: 75). He notes that, since the establishment of
the State of Israel, which was a seismic tremor that shook the very
foundation of their beliefs,
The Old Testament has generally fallen into disuse among both clergy and
laity, and the Church has been unable to come to terms with its ambigui-
ties, questions, and paradoxes-especially with its direct application to the
twentieth-century events in Palestine. The fundamental question of many
Christians, whether uttered or not, is: How can the Old Testament be the
Word of God in light of the Palestinian Christians' experience with its use
to support Zionism? (1989: 77-78).
The problem has been noticed in Asia also.
4
Acknowledging the Problem
It is undeniable that terrible injustices have been committed through
processes of colonialism, and, as we have seen, biblical and theological
discourse has been a vivifying component in propelling them. What
response is possible? One of the features of the deployment of the
Bible as a legitimation for colonialism and exploitation is the absence
of serious consideration for the victims of such activity. The Canaan-
ites did not have the right to continue to occupy a region which they
had profaned with their idolatry and abominations (Deut. 9.5; cf.
Deut. 18.9-14; Lev. 18.24-25; 20.22-24), which justified the violence
against them.
There exists within the Bible a degree of violence and praise of vio-
lence that is surpassed by no other ancient book (see de Ste Croix, in
Said 1988: 166). The existence of such texts within Sacred Scripture is
an affront to moral sensitivities. The Holy War traditions, and espe-
cially that of the herem, pose an especially difficult moral problem
(Niditch 1993: 28-77; see Barr 1993: 207-20; Hobbs 1989; Lind
1980). The ban requires that the enemy be utterly destroyed as a
4. Pui-lan Kwok notes the controversial, ambivalent, and often conflicting
status of the Bible in Asia. During the nineteenth century it was an integral part of the
colonial discourse, legitimating an ethnocentric belief in the inferiority of the Asian
peoples and the deficiency of Asian cultures. Ironically, the same Bible has also been
a resource for Christians struggling against oppression in Asia. Kwok judges that
one of the reasons why, after centuries of missionary activity, only some 3 per cent
of Asians are Christians is the link between Christianity and colonialism (1995: 1-2).
sacrifice to the deity who had made the victory possible. This portrays
God as one who cherishes the sacrifice of the crown of his creation.
Moreover, the killer is not only acquitted of moral responsibility for
his destruction, but acts under a religious obligation. The ban both
reduces the nature of the crime and exonerates the culprit. It is little
consolation to the victims of unsolicited slaughter that their killing is
an act of piety which redounds to the glory of God and advances the
sanctity of the perpetrator. For many modern readers, clothing such
activity in the garment of religion and piety adds to the problematic.
'Ancient Israel' did not invent such perspectives, nor were they left
unchallenged within Israelite moral reflection, as the variety of (war)
traditions within the biblical text itself makes clear.
5
The ban tradition
is appealed to in support of the deuteronomistic ethic, which empha-
sizes the priestly values of separating the good from the bad etc. These
authors, of course, had no intention of applying the letter of their war
traditions, nor were they in any position to do so. Their real interest
lay in promoting the ideal that the 'Israelites' should separate them-
selves from the impurity of others, a relatively innocuous, if not par-
ticularly attractive disposition. Had these authors used a less morally
problematic metaphor than the ban, colonized peoples up to the pre-
sent time might have been saved some of the racist outrages inflicted
5. In the priestly ideology of war recounted in Numbers 31 there is a variant of
the ban paradigm. Here one encounters perspectives on justifying killing or not
killing in war. In this circle, one becomes engaged in the symbolic world of the
priests, in which everything is weighed in terms of the duality of clean (us) and
unclean (them), with special attention to sexual status. In addition to incorporating
the notions that the cause of war is holy and that its execution is of the order of a
ritual, the overall ideology of war, however, involves the realization that killing
brings on defilement, from which one must be purified (see Niditch 1993: 78-89).
This ideology tries to have it both ways: killing the 'Other' is a divine mandate, but at
the same time is a defiling activity. Niditch also discusses the bardic tradition of war,
in which the activity is equated with a 'sport' in which heroes and fair play feature
prominently (1993: 90-105). 'The chivalric texts of the Hebrew Bible impose a
patina of noble order on the chaos that is real war' (p. 103). She examines the ideol-
ogy of trickersterism in war, in which the weak justify their indiscriminate fighting
on the grounds of the justness of the trickster's cause ( 1993: I 06-22). The ideology
of expediency applies to those war situations in which the powerful consider them-
selves to be justified in exercising extreme brutality with God's blessing ( 1993: 123-
33). Finally, Niditch examines the ideology of non-participation, by which the pow-
erless leave the fighting to be done by way of a miraculous divine intervention ( 1993:
134-49).
upon them, fuelled by a simplistic reading of these traditions.
The sermon of Cotton Mather, delivered in Boston in September
1689, charged the members of the armed forces in New England
to consider themselves to be Israel in the wilderness, confronted by
Amalek: pure Israel was obliged to 'cast out [the Indians] as dirt in the
streets', and eliminate and exterminate them (Niditch 1993: 3). Roland
Bainton provides numerous examples from the period of the Crusades
(1960: 112-33) up to such eighteenth-century preachers as Herbert
Gibbs who thanked the mercies of God for extirpating the enemies of
Israel in Canaan (i.e. Native Americans) (1960: 168). Niditch observes:
This ongoing identification between contemporary situations and the war-
ring scenes of the Hebrew Bible is a burden the tradition must guiltily
bear. The particular violence of the Hebrew Scriptures has inspired vio-
lence, has served as a model of and model for persecution, subjugation,
and extermination for millennia beyond its own reality. This alone makes
study of the war traditions of the Hebrew Scriptures a critical and impor-
tant task (Niditch 1993: 4).
It is some consolation that some passages of the Bible reveal a sense of
guilt and remorse at the occupation of what belonged to others (see,
e.g., Josh. 24.13; 1 Mace. 15.33-34). Nevertheless, in the biblical leg-
end, whatever rights the Canaanites had in terms of the prevailing
international order evaporate in the pens of some of the biblical the-
ologians. In the biblical narrative, religion defined the terms of dis-
crimination, leaving the believers with all the rights and unbelievers
with none.
There are major errors involved in a naive interpretation of the
Bible, and every effort must be made to rescue it from being a blunt
instrument in the oppression of one people by another. A major
problem with some of the traditions of the Old Testament, especially
those concerned with the promise of land, is its portrayal of God as
what many modern people would regard as a racist, militaristic xeno-
phobe, whose views would not be tolerated in any modern democracy.
People with moral sensitivities and concern for the dignity of other
peoples will question the kind of biblicism which sees the core of bib-
lical revelation to be frozen in the concepts of Chosen People and
Promised Land, when the application of such views can have such
morally questionable outcomes as discussed here. If a naive interpre-
tation of the Bible leads to such unacceptable conclusions, what kind
of exegesis can rescue it?
The Impact of Reading the Bible
The Bible is the most important single source of all (English-
language) literature, and its influence on our culture has been so per-
vasive and profound that in order to understand ourselves we must
deal with its strange and yet familiar past (Alter and Kermode 1987:
1-2). Over the last ten years there has grown up a range of approaches
to the criticism of 'the biblical text' which move away from historical-
critical criticism, which has dominated the discipline since the
Enlightenment (see Parsons's survey, 1992). However, the claim of
Alter and Kermode that the Bible achieves its effects by means no dif-
ferent from those generally employed by written language (1987:
2)-an assertion made without recourse to any sophisticated study of
how the Bible actually functions, whether in the secular or religious
academic context, the liturgical and para-liturgical one, or the market-
place-is not borne out by my study and is erroneous.
The Literary Criticism of the Bible applies the normal techniques of
the discipline, which derive from the experience of reading books
written by single authors for individual readers. The results which
obtain in the case of normal secular literature are likely to be a poor
guide to appreciating the pervasive, constitutive influence of the Bible
on those who engage in the variety of encounters with it. Moreover,
the presumption that the place and significance of the Bible are uni-
formly understood and find an agreed universal position within a
shared discourse must be abandoned. The quite different predisposi-
tions towards, and uses of the Bible within the various Christian and
Jewish traditions are not generally acknowledged, and are hidden
within such confused phrases as the Judaeo-Christian tradition and
sharing the same Bible.
Roman Catholics, for example, tend to situate the Bible within a
wide tradition which incorporates 2000 years of Christian reflection
and practice. In the Reformed Christian traditions, there is a tendency
to accord the Bible the status of the supreme source of religious
insight, and to regard it as the only primary text, and often the sole
norm of belief and practice. When an extract from the Bible is read in
the Christian assembly it is invariably a part of the drama of re-enact-
ment of the saving acts of Jesus. In the Christian Eucharistic assembly
in particular, when the texts re-present the Word, the drama of the
liturgy moves on to the offering of gifts, the great Prayer of
Thanksgiving, with its focus on the Passion, Death, Resurrection and
Future Coming of Christ. The re-proclamation of the biblical text in a
liturgical context ought to be followed by actions to avoid meriting
the exhortation of a preacher of an earlier generation, 'Be doers of
the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves' (Jas 1.22).
Within the Jewish rabbinic tradition, the Bible read in the syna-
gogue is understood within the framework of the Oral Tradition
(Torah she be'al peh) learned in the beit midrash (the house of inter-
pretation). Although the Torah and certain prophetic readings consti-
tute an integral part of Jewish liturgy, these texts are dealt with within
an interpretative culture, of which the Talmud, the commentaries (e.g.
of Rashi), and the Responsa Literature (incorporating questions and
answers from the mediaeval period until today) are the frameworks.
Within the culture of Jewish employment of the Bible, the text is
given its significance only within the terms of the hermeneutics of the
relevant Jewish community and as part of the expression of Jewish
religious identity. For a religious Jew, the Bible is an ongoing living
text, employed in daily prayers and in the Jewish festivities, whether
at home or in the synagogue.
The elevation of the biblical text from being literature to being
canonical Scripture ensures that in both the Jewish and Christian expe-
riences the Bible functions as a foundational strand within a more
complex matrix, involving both the biblical text as narrative and a
range of meta-narratives. Failure to appreciate the critical difference
between an ordinary reader's disposition before a literary text and a
Jew's or Christian's disposition in the face of the biblical text leads to
a fundamental misunderstanding of what is in fact taking place. One is
not dealing merely with the pre-understanding (Vorverstiindnis) of a
biblical text, but with the much more pervasive through-understand-
ing of the text, that is, the consolidation of one's understanding of the
text due to the ongoing encounter with it. One must also acknowledge
the after-effects of the encounter with the biblical text-what I suggest
we call the after-understanding.
The impact of the biblical text on the psyche of people is much
more pervasive than any analogous practice from secular literature.
Only religious texts, used liturgically as part of the public worship of
the believing community, for example, the Qu 'ran or the Sikh
Scriptures, are treated in a remotely comparable fashion with that
meted out to the Bible. These religious texts have an altogether higher
authority, which derives to a large extent from their alleged divine
provenance.
The Divine Provenance of the Bible
In religious and many secular circles in the West and elsewhere, the
Bible is considered to be a fundamental source for the construction of
a high morality. It provides a paradigm from which one can fashion a
morality not only fit for humankind, but worthy of God himself. How
could it be otherwise against a background of Christianity's consistent
affirmation of the truth of Scripture (sometimes reduced to the more
limited and negative concept of inerrancy) and its divine origins?
Nevertheless, as we have seen, history witnesses to interpretations of
the Bible which have been baneful in their effects. Let us review the
character, provenance and authority of the Bible.
All 39 books of the Hebrew Tanakh are recognized as Sacred
Scriptures by the Christian Church and also by the Jewish community.
The Roman Catholic Church and some Eastern Orthodox Churches
accept an additional 7 books. A canonical book is one that the
Christian Church regards as inspired by God and as having a function
in regulating morals. The collection of canonical books has an unique
status in the community of the Church. Within Judaism, the Torah has
a special significance (see Schiirer 1979: 314). However, the listing of
books within the canon covers over a range of difficulties about how
and why such and such a book was canonized and another was not.
There is a strong link between the Canon, the authority of the
Scriptures, their truth, their provenance and the divine element in
their composition. These are interrelated in a complex way which
makes comment on individual elements somewhat problematic.
6
Let us
review first the divine origin of Scripture.
6. There is no pretence here to give a comprehensive discussion of these
immensely complex issues. Summaries of the arguments may be found in several
places, for example, Brown, Fitzmyer and Murphy (1990) and Coggins and
Houlden (1990) and more extensive treatments in the bibliographies provided.
Thiselton ( 1992) is a major contribution to the ongoing discussion of hermeneutics,
and Watson (1994) discusses some of the same ground, with a particular interest in
the theological import of the questions. The Pontifical Biblical Commission's 1993
overview of the interpretation of the Bible in the Church is a masterly and judicious
summary of the discussion.
The Bible as Divinely Inspired
In addition to the problems of ordinary interpretation, when it comes
to the Bible we encounter the difficulty of the adequacy of human lan-
guage for the task of expressing God's 'mind', 'will' or 'person'.
Vatican II's Dei Verbum recapitulates the teaching of the Catholic
Church on Revelation:
[The] divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in sacred
Scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit. Holy Mother Church, relying on the belief of the apostles, holds
that the books of both Old Testament and New Testament in their entirety,
with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because, having been written
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit they have God as their author and
have been handed on as such to the Church herself (par. 11).
With the document's equal affirmation of human authorship, the
divine comes down to earth.
In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by
him they made use of their powers and abilities, so with him acting in
them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing every-
thing and only those things which He wanted. Therefore, since everything
asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be
asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be
acknowledged as teaching firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth
which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salva-
tion (par. II).
Par. 12 notes that the Word of God is a word to people, that Jesus is
fully human and that the Word of God is also fully human language.
Par. 16 insists that God is the inspirer and author of the books of both
Testaments. The divine origin of the Bible is affirmed in several other
paragraphs (9, 14, 16, 18, 20, 21, 24). The Old Testament (14), the
New Testament (16), the Gospels (18), Paul's epistles and other writ-
ings (20) are all inspired. Some paragraphs ascribe inspiration to the
biblical texts (8, 21, 24), while others affirm that they were written
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (9, 14, 20).
The Hebrew Scriptures, however, while affirming the inspiration of
prophets (2 Sam. 23.2; Hos. 1.1; Joel3.1-2), nowhere assert explicitly
that the writings which contain their words were inspired. For its part,
the New Testament affirms that David was inspired by the Holy Spirit
(Mt. 22.43; Mk 12.36; see also Acts 1.16; 28.25). The divine prove-
nance of the content of the Jewish Bible is affirmed in a multitude of
ways in the New Testament (see Prior 1995a: 128-29). The two major
New Testament texts which affirm inspiration are 2 Tim. 3.16-17 and
2 Pet. 1.19-21. The early Christian Fathers viewed the inspiration of
the Scriptures as self-evident, and various explanations were given for
the phenomenon. The affirmation of God as author, of course, does
not require the ascription of literary authorship to him-the Latin
auctor, being much broader than the English author, designates a
source or producer of something, and is close to the English origi-
nator, beginner, and so forth.
The Talmud also affirms the divine provenance of the Torah-
Torah min haShamayim: 'Whoever says that the whole Torah is from
heaven except this verse, for God did not utter it, but Moses from his
own mouth, he is one (of whom it is written) "For he has despised the
word of God" (Num. 15.31)' (b. Sanh. 99a), and that all Israelites
have a share in the world to come except those who assert that the
Torah is not from heaven (m. Sanh. 10.1). This affirmation is a touch-
stone of Jewish Orthodoxy to this day.
7
Nevertheless, all authors, even those to whom one ascribes divine
inspiration, write from within their own world view. The language
and thought patterns they use are circumscribed by their cosmologi-
cal, anthropological and theological perspectives, and very often
reflect a quite specific social and political context. This must be kept in
mind at all times as one considers the breadth of views within the Old
Testament on land occupation and war (see Niditch 1993, passim).
Nevertheless, there remains the major question of the portrayal of
God as one who does not conform to even the minimal morality which
nation states commit themselves to today. Is it sufficient to attempt to
account for the existence within divinely inspired texts of traditions
which portray God as a militaristic and xenophobic ethnicist by
balancing them with the portrayal of an omnipotent, merciful and
universal God which is known through some other traditions of the
7. At the heart of the differences in contemporary British Jewry between the
United Synagogue and the Masorti movement is the appropriate understanding of the
Hebrew Bible, especially the Pentateuch. In an article in the Orthodox Jewish
Tribune (January, 1995), Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks claims, 'An individual who
does not believe in Torah min haShamayim (i.e., that the Torah is from heaven) has
severed his links with the faith of his ancestors.' The text was reproduced in the
Jewish Chronicle, 20 January 1995, and was followed by a string of colourful letters
and articles over the subsequent weeks.
Old Testament and Christian revelation? Does not the fact that God is
portrayed as not living up to even the minimum moral ideals of the
UN Declarations on Human Rights or the prescriptions of the Fourth
Geneva Convention pose serious questions for a naive understanding
of the nature of divine inspiration?
The Authority of the Scriptures and Challenges to that Authority
The doctrine of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures confers on
them an especial authority. In addition to being included in the canon
of the Church, the liturgy and theology confer upon the biblical writ-
ings a further authority. However, to speak of the Bible as the Word
of God is polyvalent: the Word of God connotes at one and the same
time the events of salvation, the spoken messages of God's emissaries
(prophets et al.), the person of Jesus (the Logos of God-Jn 1.1),
Christian preaching, God's general message to human beings and,
finally, the Bible itself. The term Word of God is itself a product of
human language, and Word can be used of God only analogously. The
wisdom of God (another analogous term) is beyond the capacity of
human expression. It would, therefore, be more apposite to speak of
the Bible witnessing to the Wisdom of God, and doing so in a human
way, and sometimes in an embarrassingly human way.
The authority of the Bible was bound to be contested. The impact of
Higher Criticism, with its insistence on sources behind the finished
Scriptures, was formidable and drove some believers further into a
belief in verbal inspiration, and led some liberal scholars to the virtual
abandonment of the idea of divine inspiration. Problems began to
infiltrate the churches in a relentless fashion: if the Bible was histori-
cally inaccurate, how could it be theologically dependable? There is
no simple solution to the obvious tension between biblical criticism
and the authority which tradition confers on the Scriptures. When the
Bible reached the final stage of canonization in the fourth century AD,
it assumed a new status in authority for Christian belief. Brown
describes the relationship between the divine provenance of the Bible
and its authority in the following way: 'God as author of Scripture
may be understood in terms of the authority who gives rise to the
biblical books rather than in the sense of writing author' (1990: 1148;
see further Brown and Schneiders 1990: 1146-65).
However, this, and the other conventional answers to the problem
posed by the land traditions of the Bible do not remove the difficulty.
The Truth of the Bible
The concept of the truth of the Bible is no less complex than that of its
authority. The inerrancy of Scripture is a major platform of evangeli-
cal and fundamentalist Christians, and the claim to it follows from the
insistence on the divine authority of the Bible. Since it is the Word of
God it must be without error, irrespective of the contribution of the
human author. In such a view, a single error in any part of the Bible
would undermine the inerrancy of the whole. However, there is a
variety of literary forms in the Bible for which the designation true
means different things. A major limitation of a 'fundamentalist' read-
ing of the biblical text is the tendency to ignore its literary genre. In
particular, such readings tend to conclude that all narratives which
appear to deal with the past are in fact history and ignore the leg-
endary nature of some stories and the paraenetic intent of their
authors.
A more timid way of confronting the competing claims of tradition
and modernity is to affirm that the statement that the Bible is true is to
assert that it witnesses to the truth (emeth) or fidelity of God. How-
ever, it is clear that the whole doctrine of the inspiration and truth of
Scripture needs to be rethought at its foundations in the light of the
ongoing discovery of the nature of language and the complexity of
God's creation and his redeeming intentions.
Christians and the Old Testament
To say that the Churches and the Synagogue have the Bible in
common is ambiguous, until the question of the authority of the Bible
and the authority of the Church and Synagogue have been clarified.
Moreover, Christians did not write commentaries on the Old Testa-
ment texts, as did the Qumran community, but rather discussed Jesus
in the light of the Old Testament. Jesus was a key to the Old Testa-
ment, rather than the Old Testament being a key to understanding
Jesus. In Augustine's dictum, 'The New Testament lies hidden in the
Old, and the Old becomes clear in the New' ('Novum Testamentum in
Vetere latet, et in Novo Vetus patet' [see e.g. Evans and Stegner
1994]).
Palestinian Christians have a particular perspective. Both the Latin
Patriarch of Jerusalem, Monsignor Michel Sabbah, and the Anglican
Palestinian theologian, Canon Nairn Ateek, both victims of Zionist
colonialism, search for a hermeneutic of the Bible that will be valid
both biblically and theologically. They find it in the person of Jesus
Christ (Sabbah 1993: 25-31). Ateek insists that if a passage fits in with
what one knows of God through Christ, it is valid and authoritative,
and, if not, it is invalid (1989: 80-82). He sketches the biblical tension
between the portrayal of God as nationalist and universalist, and traces
the development of the nationalistic/exclusivist perspective which one
finds in the early prophets (Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and
2 Kings), in the Torah and later in the tradition of the Pharisees. He
detects in the later Prophets, and more especially in Jonah, greater
emphasis on the universalism of God. He sees this third strand raised
to a new intensity in the universalism of Jesus and the New Testament.
He judges that
The emergence of the Zionist movement in the twentieth century is a ret-
rogression of the Jewish community into the history of its very distant
past, with its most elementary and primitive forms of the concept of God.
Zionism has succeeded in reanimating the nationalist tradition within
Judaism. Its inspiration has been drawn not from the profound thoughts
of the Hebrew Scriptures but from those portions that betray a narrow and
exclusive concept of a tribal god (Ateek 1989: 101).
He regards the finely worded Declaration of Independence of the State
of Israel to be no more than a mask behind which these retrogressive
ideas hide: '[The State of Israel] will be based on the principles of lib-
erty, justice and peace as conceived the Prophets of Israel; will uphold
the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinc-
tion of religion, race, or sex.' He judges that ethical Judaism, with its
universalist outlook, has been swamped by the resurgence of a racially
exclusive concept of a people and their god (Ateek 1989: 102).
In his Pastoral Letter, written only a couple of months after the
White House Rabin-Arafat handshake in 1993, Monsignor Sabbah dis-
cusses the problems raised by Palestinian Christians for whom the
Bible is an integral part of faith and religious heritage:
a) What is the relationship between the Old and the New Testament?
b) How is violence that is attributed to God in the Bible to be understood?
c) What influence do the promises, the gift of land, the election and
covenant have for relations between Palestinians and Israelis? Is it possi-
ble for a just and merciful God to impose injustice or oppression on
another people in order to favour the people He has chosen? (par. 8).
He confronts the problem of violence in the Bible (pars. 37-46). The
Letter tackles head-on some of the most difficult aspects of the Bible
for a Christian for whom the biblical text appears to warrant her or
his oppression. For Palestinian Christians, biblical hermeneutics and
questions about the relation between the testaments are not mere mat-
ters of interesting speculation. In general he allows those passages in
the Bible which abhor violence to correct those which promote it, and
rejects the notion of a 'holy war' and of any kind of violence which
seeks justification in the biblical text (pars. 44-46).
Christians are accustomed to reading the Old Testament in the light
of the Christian faith which derives from the paschal mystery of
Christ. Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, they recognize in the
New Testament the fulfilment of the Scriptures. While this modality
of reading the Old Testament-seeking its 'spiritual sense'-reduces
the impact of the more embarrassing traditions of the Old Testament
with regard to occupation and war, it is not altogether satisfactory.
There are fundamental differences between the world view reflected
in the writings of the New Testament and that within the forms of
first-century Judaism about which we know something, and especially
that perpetuated within Rabbinic Judaism, about which we know a
great deal. In fundamental ways, the Christian vision cut itself adrift
from Judaism. Paul and the author of the Letter to the Hebrews were
in no doubt that the Torah had reached its end as a salvific legal
system (cf. Gal. 2.15-5.1; Rom. 3.20-21; 6.14; Heb. 7.11-19; 10.8-9).
Pagans admitted to the Christian Way were not to be required to
observe all the requirements of the Torah, but were to find their sal-
vation through faith in Jesus Christ. This is seen at its sharpest in the
Christian redefinition of the fundamental biblical concepts of election
and covenant (see Prior 1995a: 48-60, 141-48).
Although the allegorical method employed by the Fathers of the
Church is very much out of vogue today, it represented one way of
confronting texts which were scandalous. Another mode of dealing
with the unacceptable elements in the biblical tradition is to assert that
'the Bible reflects a considerable moral development, which finds its
completion in the New Testament'. The writings of the Old Testament
contain certain 'imperfect and provisional' elements (Dei Verbum 15),
which the divine pedagogy could not eliminate right away (Pontifical
Biblical Commission 1993: 113-14 ). Predictably, the Church supplies
another means of dealing with scandalous biblical texts. Let us exam-
ine how one liturgical tradition deals with the morally problematic
land traditions of its Sacred Scriptures.
Liturgical 'Censoring' of the Word of God
Rather than confronting the issue of the moral unacceptability of some
of the values reflected in some portions of the biblical narrative, there
are more subtle ways of dealing with the problem. The preferred
option in the Roman Catholic liturgy is to insist that the Bible is the
Word of God in its entirety and in all its parts, while, at the same
time, exercising a degree of ascesis in its liturgical use, the most
solemn forum for the use of the Sacred Scriptures. This process can
be seen in each of the main liturgies, the Mass (Eucharist) and the
Liturgy of the Hours (The Divine Office).
The Liturgy of the Word at Mass
The New Roman Missal was promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970.
The divine provenance of the Bible is reaffirmed:
When the scriptures are read in the Church, God himself speaks to his
people, and it is Christ, present in his word, who proclaims the Gospel
(The General Instruction of the Roman Missal, par. 9) ... In the readings,
explained by the homily, God speaks to his people of redemption and sal-
vation and nourishes their spirit; Christ is present among the faithful
through his word (par. 33).
The guiding principles in the construction of the Lectionary are the
'harmony' between the Testaments and the centrality of Christ in sal-
vation history. The new missal gives pride of place to the Gospel, with
the readings for the Sunday Mass arranged in a triennial cycle, with a
different synoptic gospel assigned to each year. The Old Testament
reading is generally chosen to reflect the gospel reading, so that the
Old Testament is presented as a type, whose promise is fulfilled in the
New. The readings of the weekday Mass are in a biennial cycle, in
which there is a semi-continuous reading from the books of the Old
Testament, without respect to any theme suggested by the Gospel peri-
cope of the day, or from a non-gospel text of the New Testament, fol-
lowed by a semi-continuous reading from the gospels.
The amount of the Old Testament covered is modest. One notes the
omission of great portions of the more problematic Old Testament nar-
ratives. In particular, when it comes to the land traditions of the Bible,
'the table of God's word' is rather bare. For example, although there
are fourteen selections of readings from Genesis over the triennial
Sunday cycle, the land traditions discussed in Chapter 1 are not used.
One sees a different device in operation in other texts, in the
manner of selecting verses for use within the liturgy. For example, on
the Third Sunday in Lent, Year C, the first reading is from Exodus 3,
with the selected verses being 1-8 and 13-15. What will probably
escape the worshipper, however, is that only the first half of v. 8 is
used. The scene is that of Yahweh speaking to Moses on Mount Horeb:
Then Yahweh said, ' ... I have come down to deliver them from the
Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land,
a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the
Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites'
(Exod. 3.7-8).
However, v. 8b (italicized) is not read in the liturgical assembly,
thereby eliminating any possibility that the readers might be perplexed
by Yahweh's ethnocentrism.
It is surprising that the first reading of Mass on the 29th Sunday of
Year Cis from Exod. 17.8-13, which gives details of Israel's fight
with Amalek at Rephidim. It includes,
Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; and whenever he
lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed ... And Joshua defeated Amalek and
his people with the sword (Exod. 17 .11-13).
The Gospel reading of the day (Lk. 18.1-8), exhorting to persistence
in prayer, is not enough to assuage one's chagrin. One might have
hoped that the compilers of the lectionary would have found a less
offensive choice of efficacious prayer from the Old Testament. Even
the ever-resourceful Reginald Fuller is at a loss:
It is puzzling to find this reading appointed for today ... [it] does not appear
to be particularly edifying. Despite the assurance of the second reading
that 'all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching' .. .It could
be given a typological interpretation .. .If the preacher's exegetical con-
science will permit him ... he could expound the text typologically of Christ
the heavenly priest interceding for his church militant on earth. Otherwise,
he had better leave it alone (Fuller 1974: 77).
8
The liturgical assembly is spared the most embarrassing readings by
simply omitting them (e.g. Exod. 23.28-30). The Roman Lectionary
has only six selections from Leviticus, and none includes the texts to
8. Indeed Pseudo-Barnabas interpreted Moses' prayer with extended hands as a
'typos' of the Cross and the Crucified (12.2-3) (Simonetti 1994: 12).
which I drew attention in Chapter 1. There are only nine selections
from the book of Numbers, and although the story of the returning
spies, with its list of the inhabitants of the land, is read, the references
to expelling them are not. The reading on Tuesday, Week 5 is from
Num. 21.4-9. The preceding verses, 1-3, are not used. These record
Israel's vow to Yahweh: "'If you will indeed give this people into our
hands, then we will utterly destroy their towns"' (v. 2), which is fol-
lowed by, 'Yahweh listened to the voice of Israel, and handed over the
Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their towns; so the
place was called Hormah' (v. 3).
There are 18 selections from Deuteronomy. While Deut. 7.6-11,
'For you are a people holy to Yahweh ... ', is read on the Feast of the
Sacred Heart, the preceding vv. 1-5 are not. These demand that the
Israelites utterly destroy the seven nations which Yahweh will give
over to them. Neither are the belligerent sections, Deut. 9, 12.29-30,
20.16-18, all of which promote ethnic cleansing as an act of piety,
used in the liturgy.
There are only five selections from Joshua. The first, Josh. 3.7-11,
13-17 is used on Thursday of Week 19. Although it does record
Joshua's message for the Israelites, promising that Yahweh will drive
out the indigenous inhabitants, only one of the seven nations, the
Canaanites, is named (v. 10). Moreover, the most striking accounts of
the conquest, that of Jericho, and the campaigns in the south and the
north, and the accounts of the fulfilment of the rules of the Holy War
are not used in the Mass. In fact, the liturgical choice skips over the
book from 5.12 to ch. 24, from which chapter there are three selec-
tions. In practice, then, church-going Catholics encounter virtually
none of the land traditions which are offensive.
On an autobiographical note, some days after I had returned to
Jerusalem from Amman, where I delivered a lecture on the land tradi-
tions of the Bible, I celebrated the Sunday Vigil Mass (28 Year A, on
12 October 1996) at Bethlehem University. Having traversed the
Israeli checkpoint at Gilo, I joined the community. The first reading
was from Isa. 25.6-10, which speaks so comfortingly of the eschato-
logical banquet on the mountain of Yahweh. However, the liturgical
reading stopped short at v. lOa, omitting, 'The Moabites shall be trod-
den down in their place as straw is trodden down in a dung-pit' (lOb).
However, the liturgical scalpel is not always so accommodating. Only
some days earlier, after refusals at two different checkpoints, I
arrived late at the university by a most circuitous route for the Mass
of the Feast of Guardian Angels (2 October), which had already begun
without my presidency. The first reading was from Exod. 23.20-23: 'I
am going to send an angel in front of you, to guard you on the way
and to bring you to the place that I have prepared, etc.' The
Palestinian reader continued to the end of the liturgical pericope: 'I
will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes. When my
angel goes in front of you, and brings you to the Amorites, the
Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites,
and I blot them out' (vv. 22b-23).
9
The Liturgy of the Hours (the Divine Office)
In the Roman Catholic Church, all clerics are obliged to recite the
Liturgy of the Hours, of which Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer
are 'the two hinges'. Choosing one example at random, the following
is the biblical diet for Morning Prayer of Saturday, Week 1. Imagine
the scene in the chapel of a monastery. After the hymn, 'It were my
soul's desire to see the face of God', the psalmody begins with
Ps. 119.145-52, which is a plea of an individual for help. The par-
ticular fear of the psalmist is alluded to in the phrase, 'Those who
harm me unjustly draw near.' Presumably to assure the petitioner that
Yahweh is one who can deliver, an abridged version of the 'Hymn of
Moses' after crossing the Sea of Reeds is sung next (Exod 15.1-27):
Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to Yahweh: 'I will sing to
Yahweh, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown
into the sea ... Yahweh is a warrior; Yahweh is his name. Pharaoh's char-
iots and his army he cast into the sea ... The floods covered them; they
went down into the depths like a stone' (Exod. 15.1-5).
Perhaps to avoid upsetting sensitive stomachs before the monastic
breakfast, vv. 6-8 are omitted. Perchance in the next verses, the monk
can see a solution to his problem with 'those who harm me unjustly'
drawing near:
The enemy said, 'I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my
desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword, my hand shall
9. Somewhat intriguingly, the Order of Prayer for the Mass of the Feast of
Guardian Angels of the Archdiocese of New York, used in Tantur, substitutes Job
9.1-12, 14-16 for the first reading from Exodus, and simply notes 'see Exod 23.20-
23'.
7. Rehabilitating the Bible
destroy them.' ... You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed
them. In your steadfast love you led the people whom you redeemed; you
guided them by your strength to your holy abode (Exod. 15.9-13).
277
Lest the monk be inclined to take pity on the enemy, the full implica-
tions of 'his deliverance' are hidden from him, with the omission of
vv. 14-16:
The peoples heard, they trembled; pangs seized the inhabitants of
Philistia. Then the chiefs of Edom were dismayed; trembling seized the
leaders of Moab; all the inhabitants of Canaan melted away. Terror and
dread fell upon them; by the might of your arm, they became still as a
stone until your people, Yahweh, passed by, until the people whom you
acquired passed by.
The canticle concludes with vv. 17-18, which would resonate with a
monk champing at the bit to tend his fiowerbed, or to plant trees on a
mountain-side:
You brought them in and planted them on the mountain of your own pos-
session, the place, Yahweh, that you made your abode, the sanctuary,
Yahweh, that your hands have established. Yahweh will reign forever and
ever.
Rather than follow on with the Song of Miriam and the account of the
wandering in the wilderness of Shur for three days without water
(Exod. 15.19-27), the canticle, like all psalms in the Catholic psalter,
ends with, 'Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy
Spirit.' Quickly, the celebration moves on to the final psalm of the
Morning Prayer (Ps. 117). The remainder of the Morning Prayer
consists of a short reading from the New Testament (2 Pet. 1.10-11 ),
the singing of the Canticle of Zechariah (the Benedictus, Lk. 1.68-79),
the intercessions and the concluding prayer. And then follows break-
fast, undisturbed, one hopes, by thoughts of revenge against
enemies.
10
The Liturgy of the Hours uses the entire psalter, almost, but feels
obliged to censor from the official prayer of the Church some
'offending' portions of the Word of God. This is the case with the
three psalms, and those verses of other psalms which affront sensitive
souls:
10. I recall reading a newspaper report some years ago that a monk had decapi-
tated his religious superior while at the monastic table. The report, however, made no
suggestion that the action was an example of applied hermeneutics.
The psalms are distributed over a four-week cycle. In this cycle, a very
small number of psalms are omitted ... Three psalms are omitted from the
current psalter because of their imprecatory character. These are Ps
57(58), Ps 82(83) and Ps 108(9). For similar reasons verses from several
psalms are passed over. .. Such omissions are made because of certain
psychological difficulties, even though the imprecatory psalms themselves
may be found quoted in the New Testament, e.g., Rev 6.10, and in no
way are intended as curses (General Instruction on the Liturgy of the
Hours, pars. 126, 131).
When it comes to the land traditions of the Bible, then, one observes
that the liturgy deals with the problematic of divinely mandated ethnic
cleansing by a combination of omission of unsuitable narratives, or by
excision of offending verses. It insists that the Christian hermeneutical
key to the Old Testament lies in the estimation that the books of the
Old Testament pertain to and show forth their full meaning in the
New Testament, and that they shed light on it and explain it.
11
It
appears, then, that the worshipping community recognizes in practice
the difficulties which the land traditions of the Bible pose for faith and
Christian living. Since the Church's purpose in selecting readings
from the Scriptures is to enlighten and stimulate the faith of the com-
munity and invigorate its practice, one readily appreciates its pru-
dence in overlooking those traditions which have provided theological
underpinning for various forms of colonialism, and which scandalize
most people today. One notes a corresponding ascesis in the use of the
Exodus paradigm among liberation theologians.
The Problem of the Exodus Paradigm
'Popular Bible reading' is the most profound and important work
done by the ecclesial base communities in Latin America (Richard
1990a: 211). Liberation theologians look on the Exodus story as a
paradigm for the liberation of their own people, and while their the-
ology is criticized for stressing political aspects of the biblical witness,
its adoption of the Exodus paradigm is universally accepted.
12
As we
11. 'At the risk of oversimplifying somewhat, it may be broadly stated the sort of
prediction-fulfilment schema involved in the liturgical use of the OT texts does not
differ appreciably from much of the NT use of the OT ... Obviously the NT pro-
foundly transforms the literal understanding of the OT texts in using them' (Jensen
1988: 649).
12. Dupertuis is somewhat at a loss. While acknowledging the preferential position
shall see, its use of the narrative is selective and naive. In Berryman's
archetype, after a sharing of responses to, 'What is God like?' 'Sister
Elena' reads from Exod. 3.7-8:
Then Yahweh said, 'I have observed the misery of my people who are in
Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I
know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the
Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad
land.'
After 'Sister Elena' has outlined the Exodus narrative, the people dis-
cuss what it means to say, 'God hears the cry of the oppressed people'
and whether the message is still valid today. Significantly, in
Berryman's account (1987: 39), the second half of v. 8 (italicized
here) is omitted:
a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the
Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
It appears that the villagers are encouraged to assume the fortunes of
the liberated slaves, without being burdened with the guilt of dispos-
sessing others. Berryman too omits the reference to 'the country of
the Canaanites, etc.' in his reading from Exod. 3.7-8 (1987: 49).
Similarly, in his foundational work on liberation theology,
Gutierrez excludes the reference to the original inhabitants in his
summary of Exod. 3.7-10. The Exodus event was,
The breaking away from a situation of despoliation and misery and the
beginning of the construction of a just and comradely society. It is the
suppression of disorder and the creation of a new order (Gutierrez 1988:
88).
Following a summary of a literalist reading of the Exodus narrative,
clearly understanding it to be a record of what actually happened,
Gutierrez shifts to Isa. 42.5-7, as though the act of liberation from
Egypt ended with such an idyllic scene:
The God who makes the cosmos from chaos is the same God who leads
Israel from alienation to liberation (Gutierrez 1988: 89).
of the Exodus as a model for liberation, he shies away from any form of violence,
even against the oppressor. 'The abiding symbol that comes to us from the Exodus is
not a clenched fist, inviting to struggle and revolt, but rather a lamb that was slain,
and blood "on the two doorposts"' ( 1982: 311 ). Indeed, Dupertuis himself seems to
prefer the advice of Jeremiah to the exiles to pray for the welfare of Babylon etc.
Gutierrez makes no reference to the plight of the indigenous inhabi-
tants, whom, in the biblical legend, God reduces from order to chaos.
Instead he invokes the support of Andre Neher who judges that,
With the Exodus a new age has struck for humanity: redemption from
misery. If the Exodus had not taken place, marked as it was by the
twofold sign of the overriding will of God and the free and conscious as-
sent of men, the historical destiny of humanity would have followed an-
other course (in Gutierrez 1988: 89-90).
The indigenous population of the narrative might well have hoped that
another course had been followed.
13
Berryman concludes that 'Exodus' is not simply an event, but a pat-
tern of deliverance that provides a key for interpreting both the
Scriptures and present experience (1987: 49). While traditionally the
Bible is as a window through which one peeks out with curiosity, in
the 'hermeneutic circle' of liberation biblical exegesis (from experi-
ence, to text, to experience) the base communities 'look at the Bible as
in a mirror to see their own reality' (Frei Betta, in Berryman 1987:
60). In gazing into such a mirror they see their situation portrayed
particularly in the Exodus legend, again read as history:
Before it was an image or symbol that might be used like any other theo-
logical representation, the Exodus was an historical fact. .. It must be con-
sidered in terms of its historical reality before one attempts to speculate on
its symbolic import (Fierro 1984: 476-77).
In this biblical paradigm they see the saving God of history at work
both in the past and in the present, indicating the way to achieve full
liberation, including political (Assmann 1976: 35).
Even James Cone, the father of Black Theology, falls into the trap
of a partial reading of the Exodus motif. Although Cone is particu-
larly sensitive to a reading of the Bible which sees it as a document
giving preference to the poor, he never alludes to the destruction of
13. Pixley's liberation perspective on the Exodus (1983) also evades the problem
of the violence associated with the Eisodus. He does not comment on the moral
problem of the necessity of wiping out the indigenes in Exod. 3.8, and is silent on it
in his comments on Exod. 33.1-3. The purity of the revolution seems to excuse the
extermination of the natives in Exod. 34.11-15. Although he devotes a page to 'You
shall not kill' (Exod. 20.13), he passes over the barbarous plunder of Exod. 23, and
seems to excuse the slaughter of the 3000 kinspeople by the sons of Levi (Exod.
32.26-30) as the price of fidelity.
the people who pay the price for the liberation and settlement of the
Israelites. His overview of the Old Testament is typical of that of
Biblical Liberation Theology: the 'unanimous testimony [of the Old
Testament is] to Yahweh's commitment to justice for the poor and the
weak' (Cone 1974: 429). The God of the Bible, Cone continues, is
deeply immersed in the affairs of the people of Israel, leading them
from bondage in Egypt, and ending with his raising of Jesus from the
dead. He is an active political God. God as liberator of the enslaved
Israelites is at the heart of the confession of faith (Exod. 15.1-2; 19.4-
5).
However, the real poor of the Exodus narrative, surely, are the
ones forgotten in the victory, the Canaanites and others, who are
pushed aside or exterminated by the religious zeal of the invading
Israelites with God on their side. Cone's hermeneutical principle of
reading the Bible in the light of the experience of black people cannot
deliver him from the problem posed by the biblical legend (Cone
1975: 8). The Bible itself is not value-free, and in the Exodus narra-
tive is disdainful of the rights of the indigenous people. One should
not be satisfied, then, with interpreting black experience in the light of
the Bible. Rather, one must allow black experience to interrogate the
Bible, and expose those traditions which are fundamentally oppressive.
In the Palestinian context, Ateek protests against the use of the
Exodus account as a paradigm for the establishment of the State of
Israel. He regards the story of Naboth's vineyard (1 Kgs 21) as more
promising and relevant to his people's concerns, in that it demon-
strates God's unwavering concern for justice.
14
However, Ateek does
not wish on the Israelis a retribution similar to that meted out to Ahab
and Jezebel. Should the victims of oppression, such as Amerindians,
black South Africans and Palestinians, not find themselves more natu-
rally on the side of the Canaanites and others than on that of the
14. Ateek sees four Exodus paradigms: the first Exodus from Egypt; the second,
the return from Babylon; the third, Luke's Transfiguration scene and the death-resur-
rection of Christ; and fourth. the picture in Revelation of the people of God coming
out redeemed. If the Exodus paradigm is to be used, he pleads, one should move
beyond the first Exodus. He points to four New Testament texts which 'de-Zionize'
the Old Testament: Rom. 4.13 ('the promise that he would inherit the o ~ m o s did not
come to Abraham ... '); Lk. 4.18-20's omission oflsa. 61.2's 'the day of vengeance';
the Magnificat (Lk. 1.46-55), and Jn 4.21 's worship, neither on Gerizim nor Zion
(Ateek Lecture and discussion, in Tantur Ecumenical Institute, 1996).
Chosen People, mandated to cleanse the land of its indigenes, a fate to
which their own experience corresponds?
If people were not deprived of engagement with the second half of
the Exodus paradigm, they would not escape morally unscathed from
their communal encounter with the whole biblical paradigm. They
would also see for themselves that the biblical text cannot be dealt
with in such a partial fashion as is common among liberation theolo-
gians. Pace Gutierrez and others, it is not the case that 'The entire
Bible ... mirrors God's predilection for the weak and abused of human
history' (1988: xxvii). Combining the Exodus from Egypt with the
Eisodus into the land of the Canaanites and others as the narrative
requires, the biblical paradigm would more appropriately justify the
behaviour of the conquistadores.
Many Puritan preachers in North America referred to Native
Americans as Amalekites and Canaanites, who, if they refused to be
converted were worthy of annihilation (see Cherry 1971). A Native
American comments, 'As long as people believe in the Yahweh of
deliverance, the world will not be safe from Yahweh the conqueror'
(Warrior 1991: 294).
Without the spur of entering into the land of promise, the Israelites
of the narrative would have languished in the desert, and would cer-
tainly have preferred reverting to the more tolerable life in Egypt. It
is the entrance (Eisodus) into the land of milk and honey which is pre-
sented as keeping their hope alive: man does not live on manna and
quails alone.
15
Somewhat naively, if inadvertently accurately, the special Preface to
the Eucharistic Prayer for the Catholic dioceses in the USA for
Thanksgiving Day draws a parallel between the Israelite and European
conquests:
Once you chose a people and gave them a destiny and, when you brought
them out of bondage to freedom, they carried with them the promise that
15. Michael Walzer's exegetical appetite also is exhausted simply by his com-
ments on 'the land of milk and honey'. His mellifluous prose obscures the problem
raised by the presence of the indigenes and the requirement of exterminating them in
order to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (1985: 101-30). As the first
description of revolutionary politics (p. 134 ), the book of Exodus provides the para-
digm for political Zionism, with the Canaanites explicitly excluded from the world of
moral concern (p. 142). Their extermination, gratefully, was effectively rescinded by
talmudic and mediaeval commentators (pp. 143-44). See Said 1988.
7. Rehabilitating the Bible
all men would be blessed and all men could be free. What the prophets
pledged was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. . .It has come to pass in every gen-
eration ... It happened to our fathers, who came to this land as if out of the
desert into a place of promise and hope ...
283
It remains to be seen what long-term impact the reading of the expur-
gated Exodus paradigm will have on oppressed people, and how the
prevailing liberation hermeneutic faces up to the fact that some of the
major themes of the Bible are themselves exploitative. Indeed, the
Exodus-Eisodus motif is not a paradigm for liberation, but for colo-
nial plunder. That is the plain sense of the biblical narrative, and the
way the text has been used.
Rehabilitating the Exodus
The problem has not gone unnoticed. A celebrated rabbinic tradition
presents a humane reaction to the problem of the destruction of the
Egyptian pursuers. God's ministering angels sought to rejoice after
the Israelites crossed the Sea of Reeds. But Yahweh asked, 'The work
of my hands has drowned in the sea and shall you chant songs?' and
says that he does not 'rejoice in the downfall of the wicked' (b. Meg.
lOb; b. Sanh. 39b). Susan Niditch recounts how her grandfather
would participate in a sort of ritual wailing for the Egyptians in the
course of the ritual spilling of a drop of wine for each of the plagues
in the Passover seder. She attributes such sentiments to his
... reaching out beyond the community of Israel to the community of
humankind, bonded by Job-like experiences and the rocky relationships
all of us share with the powerful forces of authority, familial, political and
divine ... The joy experienced in the liberation of one's own people, a vic-
tory made possible by God's war against an oppressive tyrant, is tem-
pered by sorrow for the enemy (Nidich 1993: 150).
Sentiment comes cheap. While it is understandable that the descendants
of the liberated slaves might even rejoice at the destruction of their
enemies, and take ghoulish pleasure in the sufferings of the
Egyptians-even to the extent of suggesting that the frogs castrated
them (Exod. R. 9.10)-to rejoice in the destruction of the innocent
indigenes is less condonable-even if, in the narrative, they were sin-
ning defilers. Nevertheless, when faced with suffering, senselessness,
absurdity and death, the notion of the promised land can function as a
very powerful symbol which sustains one in hope and inspires one to
action (Kwok 1995: 99-100). The promised land, however, must be
new, with a new Exodus and a new covenant, such as that spoken of
by Second Isaiah (Isa. 55.2-13). Or, perhaps, one may add, that
spoken of by Jesus.
From Jerusalem to Rome
As we have seen, the applied exegesis of some biblical narratives
raises the question of the traditional role of the Bible as a source of
moral inspiration. The ideals of divine revelation, read within the
context of conventional colonial enterprises, do not come up to the
standards required by human rights and acceptable international
behaviour. The humiliation and destruction of indigenes is not morally
acceptable, and surely is not in accordance with the divine will.
Every effort must be made to extricate interpretative communities
from a literalist rendering of the biblical land traditions and the con-
sequences to which such understandings of the text have led. The
Christian Church reads the Old Testament in the light of the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. The ministry of Jesus is considered to
have been 'foreshadowed', 'adumbrated' or even 'foretold' in the Old
Testament (Lk. 24.44). A christological and messianic interpretation
of the Old Testament allows these books to show forth their full
meaning in the New Testament (Dei Verbum, pars. 15-16).
The Promised Land
Several elements in the New Testament indicate a reaction to the terri-
torialization of God's promise, and there is a tendency to eschatolo-
gize the theme of land. Paul, the diaspora Jewish Christian writes,
'our citizenship is in heaven' (Phil. 3.20). The gift of land is not
explicitly mentioned among the attributes of his 'kindred according to
the flesh' (Rom. 9.4). The anonymous author of the Letter to the
Hebrews speaks of a new heaven and a new earth and of a rest not yet
attained (11.13-15). The lack of interest in territoriality is reflected
also in the notion of the new, heavenly, rather than the familiar, ter-
restrial Jerusalem. The Letter to the Hebrews contrasts the traditional
modes of access to God provided by recurring Jewish ritual with the
once-for-all atoning act of the death of Jesus. Just as the ritual of the
Old Testament was superseded by the salvific death of Jesus, so the
earthly Jerusalem yielded to the new, heavenly city (Heb. 12.22).
Moreover, it is only the heavenly city which features in the book of
Revelation (Rev. 3.12; 21.2, 10). The contrast between the earthly and
heavenly cities is reflected also in Paul's Letter to the Galatians (4.25-
26).
In the Christian dispensation, the promise of the new earth extends,
supersedes, completes or brings to its fruition the earlier promise of a
bounded land. God's promises now involve the whole earth, indeed a
new heaven and a new earth, which is available to all without distinc-
tion of race, nation or language. This vision, according to Christian
claims, is the promised inheritance of those who are disciples of Jesus
the Messiah, and especially those who are poor, exploited, etc. For
those imbued with Christian hope, reversion to the initial promise as
outlined in the Pentateuch does not mark an advance in the teleology
of salvation and human destiny.
The promise of a new creation lifts up the eyes of believers from
the earth. The early Church was attracted by the landlessness reflected
in Noah's ark. In the Christian dispensation, Jesus Christ, who himself
did not have the whereupon even to lay his head (Mt. 8.20), does not
promise salvation in terms of possession of a particular territory, but
invites the creation of a community of faith, hope and love engaged in
the worship of God, 'neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem'
(Jn 4.21). For the people of the New Covenant, salvation does not lie
in any earthly security, not even that provided by Jerusalem itself
(Acts 1.8).
Election and Covenant
There are fundamental differences between the world view reflected
in the writings of the New Testament and that perpetuated within
Rabbinic Judaism. This distinction is seen at its sharpest in the
Christian redefinition of the fundamental biblical concepts of election
and covenant. In the Christian dispensation, the Good News of God's
care for his Chosen Ones is expanded beyond the categories estab-
lished by racial, ethnic or national distinctions (Rev. 7.9). According
to the Acts of the Apostles, Peter had a vision in prayer, through
which he learned that the distinction between unclean and clean ani-
mals was void, which discovery he carried over to annul distinctions
made on ethnic categories (Acts 10.28-35).
The universal appeal of the Christian vision can be comprehended
from a number of New Testament texts. While for Christians,
Jerusalem is the city in which the Church was born, the Christian
286
dynamic demands movement away from it to the ends of the earth.
This is seen nowhere more clearly than in Luke-Acts.
16
The climactic
account of the resurrection appearance in Lk. 24.44-49 and its echo in
Acts 1.3-8 synthesizes Luke's account of the ministry of Jesus and
propels his readers forward into the continuation of that mission in
the Church, a mission beginning in Jerusalem, but destined for the
ends of the earth: 'Stay in the city, until you are clothed with power
from on high' (Lk. 24.49); 'You shall receive power when the Holy
Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem
and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth' (Acts 1.8). In
both Lk. 24.49 and Acts 1.8 the witness to Jesus will begin in
Jerusalem and be carried forward into all Judea and Samaria, and
finally to the end of the earth (see Prior 1995a: 24-25; 52-60).
Christianity in Luke's view, then, is not tied to any specific land-its
mission is to the ends of the earth.
From the perspective of the author of Luke-Acts, the New Order
ushered in by Jesus expands the perceived horizons of God's care by
moving beyond ethnic and religious categories, from Jerusalem to the
ends of the earth. The Lukan Jesus' challenge to the prevailing view of
election and covenant is seen in the programmatic text outlining the
visit of Jesus to the synagogue in Nazareth, in which he gives a revo-
lutionary interpretation of Isaiah 61 and the doctrine of election. The
good news of Isaiah 61, originally directed at the consolation of the
returned exiles from Babylon, is transposed into good news for all
who are oppressed. The Isaiah 61 text as recorded by Luke is free of
its references to that exclusiveness which is a feature of ethnicity and
'nationalism'. The Lukan Jesus' radical critique of the notion of God's
choice of one people is intensified by his appeal to the Gentile over-
tures of Elijah and Elisha (see Prior 1995a: 141, 147-48). The New
Order of Election (see Prior 1995a: 48-60) is brought about by the
power of God which is for everyone who has faith-for the Jew first,
but also for the Greek (Rom. 1.16-see Prior 1989: 125-39). This
new revelation required Paul to reinterpret his Jewish heritage: his
kinsfolk, previously exclusively by natural descent (Rom. 9.4-5) is
expanded to include both Jew and Greek (Rom. 10.12; see Rom. 10.1;
11.25-26).
16. See also the scene on the Galilee mountain in Mt. 28.16-20, where as the
climax of his Gospel, Matthew has the injunction of the Risen Jesus to make
disciples of all nations.
CONCLUSION
As we have seen, the biblical claim of the divine promise of land is
integrally linked with the claim of divine approval for the extermina-
tion of the indigenous people. It is assumed widely that its literary
genre is history, even though this view runs in the face of all serious
scholarly comment. These land traditions pose fundamental moral
questions, relating to one's understanding of the nature of God, of his
dealings with humankind and of human behaviour. They have been
deployed in support of barbaric behaviour in a wide variety of con-
texts, for close on 2000 years. The communities which have preserved
and promulgated those biblical traditions, then, must shoulder some of
the responsibility for what has been done in alleged conformity with
the values contained within them (Chapter 1).
The behaviour of communities and nation states is complex, and is
rarely the result of one element of motivation. Colonialist and impe-
rialist enterprises derive from a matrix of interactive determinants.
The colonization of Latin America in the mediaeval period had a dev-
astating effect on the indigenous population, the consequences of
which perdure to this day. Although it was fuelled by a concurrence
of motivations, mediaeval Christian theocratic imperialism was a
major element of its ideological justification. Its ideological under-
pinning was traced back to biblical paradigms of 'ethnic cleansing' and
'belligerent settler colonialism', the legitimization of which had the
authority of Sacred Scripture (Chapter 2).
Although the primary motivation of the Dutch colonizers who
trekked from the Cape was economic and social, subsequent ideo-
logues of a fabricated Afrikaner nationalism erected an ideological
structure of Christian nationalism which had the biblical paradigm of
settler colonialism at its foundation. The pattern of 'separation' and
'separate development' was justified by the prevailing Christian the-
ologians, who traced its moral justification to the alleged behaviour of
the Israelites in the pre-conquest and settlement periods. Although
apartheid became a term that evoked virtually universal opprobrium,
it was deployed within an ideological framework which derived from
a particular form of Christian nationalism which looked to the biblical
paradigm as its ultimate, Godly-assured justification. Although its
durability proved to be very limited, apartheid wreaked havoc on the
indigenous people, leaving South Africa with the greatest recorded
inequality of any country of the world.
Political Zionism appealed to a range of factors to warrant its form
of settler colonialism. Although it was resisted by most religious Jews
from the beginning, it was able to exploit, somewhat cynically given
the non- and anti-religious dispositions of its proponents, an appeal to
God's gift of the land, as narrated in the Torah-from-Heaven: Zionism
could rest its case on the source of all authority. As we have seen, the
realization of the 'Zionist dream' has been an unmitigated nightmare
for the indigenous population of Palestine (Chapter 4).
Although each enactment of the colonial enterprise has its own dis-
tinctive qualities, there are common elements by which virtually all
colonial endeavours struggle to justify themselves. Invariably these
include assertions of superiority over the natives and the pretence of
endowing them with the fruits of a superior order-being 'outposts of
progress' in 'the heart of darkness'. In the colonial ventures that
emanated out of Europe, the motivation customarily had a strong
religious element, and looked to the biblical paradigm for irreproach-
able authorization. South African Calvinists have repudiated and
repented for their use of the biblical legend to justify their treatment
of the blacks and coloureds. The descendants of mediaeval Spanish and
Portuguese colonialists and their victims struggle to repair some of
the devastation whose effects perdure.
The situation with respect to Israel-Palestine is unique. The appli-
cation of a literalist reading of the biblical mandate appears to be
more apposite for Jews than for others who appeal to it to justify land
occupation. The predicament is particularly poignant in virtue of the
Nazi determination to annihilate Jews and Judaism. However, the vic-
tims of Auschwitz would hardly approve of a previously oppressed
people now oppressing an innocent third party and exacting as the
price of its own liberation the permanent dispossession and servitude
of the other: 'The victims of Auschwitz would never have bombed
Beirut' (Timerman 1984: 7). There is little indication that Zionism
Conclusion 289
will reverse the spoliation it has caused, or will be checked in its
exploitative intentions.
Uniquely in the discourse of colonialist enterprises, Zionists not
only protest their innocence, but, even while perpetrating the com-
prehensive oppression of another people, they retain the psychology
of victims, and even blame the victims. No less uniquely, Zionism has
managed to retain the support of much of the West, at least until
recently. Instead of engaging in an ongoing critique of Zionism's
reduction of the ideals of Judaism to those portions of its tradition that
betray a narrow and exclusivist concept of a tribal god, some
Christians, especially those involved in the Jewish-Christian dialogue,
accept as a compulsory part of the dialogue the obligation to support
unconditionally an unrestrained and militant Zionism, as if it were the
sole authentic expression of Judaism. Meanwhile, without the critical
solidarity of the Western 'Christian' world, whose conscience has been
crippled in the wake of the Holocaust, the behaviour of the State of
Israel towards the Palestinians has earned widespread international
criticism, and is a cause of great distress among many people, includ-
ing of course many Jews, albeit virtually entirely from the secular
camp. Torah-driven zealotry is at the forefront of the oppression of
the indigenous Palestinians (Chapter 5).
Recent scholarship on Israel's origins challenges profoundly many
of the 'givens' of previous discourse. Literary and historical investi-
gation has convinced virtually all scholars that the genre of the patri-
archal, pentateuchal and conquest-settlement narratives is not history,
but is part of the fabricated myth of origins in the process of 'nation'-
building in the wake of the Babylonian exile, and perhaps later in the
Persian period. In that light, it is injudicious to conclude that God
made the promise of progeny and land to Abraham after the fashion
indicated in Genesis 15, and that the occupation took place as
described in Joshua 1-12. No critical biblical scholar regards the
account in Joshua as reflecting what actually happened prior to the
establishment of the Israelites as a 'national' group. The archaeologi-
cal evidence suggests a sequence of periods marked by a gradual and
peaceful coalescence of disparate peoples into a group whose achieve-
ment of a new sense of unity culminated only with the entry of the
Assyrian administration. The biblical narratives are literary composi-
tions which refract the unknown details of an unrecoverable historical
past and serve them up in a series of legends, epics and myths of
'national' origins, which are deployed in a new social, political, and
particularly religious context. The authors of these compositions,
which, at a minimum, come from a period of not less than 500 years
after the 'events' had no intention of using them as justification for the
extermination of 'Others'.
Moreover, notions of a strictly linear ethnic descent from (a leg-
endary) Abraham to today's Ukrainian Jewish emigrants to Israel are
illusory. Historical sources do not allow us to differentiate between
'Israelites' and 'Canaanites', and they point to Israelite origins within
the land rather than outside it as the biblical narrative insists.
Moreover, the variety of people in Palestine at the time of the so-
called Israelite settlement, and later included within the 'people of
Israel' during the creation of the regional kingdoms of Israel and
Judah, coupled with the effects of the population transfer and
replacement by the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian empires pre-
clude the common assumption that one is dealing with a homogeneous
'people of Israel', ethnically, culturally and religiously one at all
periods (Chapter 6).
The presumption that the biblical paradigm of land possession por-
trayed at one period has an automatic currency for quite a different
one, whether in mediaeval Latin America, or nineteenth-twentieth-
century Afrikaner and Zionist nationalism is not sustainable. More-
over, it is not without irony that the Bible, and its use as a legitimating
document for the colonial ventures we have discussed, is applied
against the interests of peoples for whom the biblical text had no cor-
responding authority. The very application by outsiders, Christian and
Jewish, of the world view of the Bible to a people for whom it had no
authoritative standing is a striking example of religious and political
imperialism.
1
Against the background of even some knowledge of the conse-
quences of colonization for indigenous populations, biblical scholar-
ship has been modest in its concern for the moral dimension of the
1 . The pre-colonial inhabitants of southern Africa were not literate, and the
peoples of Latin America had their own highly sophisticated systems of religion. In
1914 Palestine, three years before the British conquest, the population of the area
was 757,182, with 590,890 (78 per cent) Muslim, 83,794 (11 per cent) Jewish and
73,024 (9.6 per cent) Christian (Abu-Lughod 1987: 142). Today, 98 per cent of the
Palestinian population within the areas controlled by Israel are Muslims, for whom
the biblical text, in the strict sense, is outside their religious and cultural framework.
Conclusion 291
problematic. Since virtually all of the scholarship has been done since
the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, and most of it since
1967, the achievement of biblical scholarship, when judged by its con-
cern for the indigenous people and the values enshrined in interna-
tional law and conventions on human rights is not impressive. The
support that these colonizing activities have acquired from theological
and exegetical assertions from within academic and religious circles,
Jewish and Christian, is not a legacy I am proud to bequeath to the
next generation of exegetes and religious. Such support in my genera-
tion will elicit condemnation and repudiation from future generations,
in a manner corresponding to the way other forms of theocratic
colonialisms have been rejected. Ultimately, and probably soon, other
traditions within Judaism and Christianity will achieve enough support
to ensure that Judaism will not be condemned forever to those forms
of theocratic imperialism which receive support from only the more
disreputable traditions of the Bible, and from those forms of Jewish
and Christian eschatology that are scandalous to even secular
humankind.
The ongoing identification in subsequent history with the warring
scenes of the Hebrew Bible is a burden the biblical tradition must
bear. The fact that the particular violence of the Hebrew Scriptures
has inspired violence, and has served as a model of, and for persecu-
tion, subjugation and extermination for millennia beyond its own
reality makes investigation of these biblical traditions a critical and
important task (cf. Niditch 1993: 4). Nevertheless, the ethnocentric,
xenophobic and militaristic character of the biblical fabricated myths
of origins is treated in conventional biblical scholarship as if it were
above any questioning on moral grounds, even by criteria derived
from other parts of the Bible. Most commentators are uninfluenced by
considerations of human rights, when these conflict with a naive
reading of the sacred text, and appear to be unperturbed by its advo-
cacy of plunder, murder and the exploitation of indigenous peoples,
all under the guise of fidelity to the eternal validity of the Sinaitic
covenant. Meanwhile, a God who insists on the destruction of people
as an act of devotion to him is one from whom most decent people
should recoil. The biblical doctrines of God's Chosen People and
Promised Land assume a problematic character when viewed against
the colonialist exploitation of them leading to the exspoliation of the
indigenous peoples of Latin America, the humiliation of non-whites in
South Africa and, in our own day, to militaristic and xenophobic
Zionism, which undermines the integrity of Judaism, embarrasses and
shocks most moral people and wreaks havoc on an innocent third
party. Christians have long abandoned circumcision, the killing of
adulterers and other details of the Torah as essential expressions of
fidelity to the progressive revelation of God.
'There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a
document of barbarism' (Benjamin 1973: 258). Biblical scholars have
the most serious obligation to prevent outrages being perpetrated in
the name of fidelity to the biblical covenant. The application of the
Bible in defence of the Crusades, Spanish and Portuguese colonialism,
South African apartheid and political Zionism has been a calamity,
leading to the suffering and humiliation of millions of people, and to
the loss of respect for the Bible as having something significant to
contribute to humanity. Christians caught up in an uncritical approach
to the Old Testament may seek refuge in the claim that the problem
lies with the predispositions of the modern reader, rather than with
the text itself. Pace Deist (1994: 28-29) and others, one cannot escape
so easily. One must acknowledge that much of the Torah, and the
book of Deuteronomy in particular, contains menacing ideologies and
racist, xenophobic and militaristic tendencies, and is dangerous when
read without respect for its literary genre and the circumstances of its
composition.
2
The moral problem stems from the nature of some of
the material of the Bible itself. As Niditch has shown, there is a vari-
ety of war traditions in the Bible-she discusses seven-which involve
overlap and self-contradiction (1993: 154). The implications of the
existence of dubious moral dispositions, presented as mandated by the
divinity within a book that is canonized as Sacred Scripture invites the
most serious investigation (Chapter 7).
However, a solution to the historical problem of Israelite origins
does not eliminate the problem posed by the literary narrative. It is
2. Pace President Clinton, on the night before the White House signing of the
Declaration of Principles (13 September 1993), the book of Joshua is not the best
distraction for a person transfixed between wakefulness and sleep. Neither, pace
Baruch Goldstein, should the book of Esther be accorded a favoured place in the
search for moral exhortation. Hotel managers may need to censor their Gideon
Bibles, lest their clients be driven to appalling behaviour in the wake of sleepless
nights spent reading some of the more racist, xenophobic and militaristic traditions
within the biblical text.
Conclusion 293
the narrative itself, rather than the sophisticated exegesis of it, that has
fuelled colonial adventures. While early Israelite history belongs to
the unrecoverable past, the biblical narrative perdures as an instru-
ment of oppression. In the narrative, the entry into a land already
occupied by others, followed by not only the warrant to violate the
rights of the indigenes, but by the divine mandate to do so, becomes
the climax of the liberation to be celebrated. What the narrative
requires would be designated war-crimes and crimes against humanity
according to modern secular standards of human and political rights.
While the results of literary and archaeological investigation of the
biblical narrative of Israelite origins, even at this stage, might be very
welcome to the Amerindians, the southern African blacks and the
Palestinians, they would be judged to have come rather too late on the
scene.
However, while the investigation of the nature and period of com-
position of the biblical narrative is illuminating in its own right, it is
the finished composition that has been accorded canonical status,
reflecting its divine provenance. The biblical text has been accorded a
position of foundational significance, whether in the Synagogue or the
Church, and even, by extension, in the lecture-hall and the 'market-
place'. The Bible has enjoyed and retains a level of authority in much
of the globe which is matched only by the Sacred Scriptures of other
traditions. The divine provenance accorded it in all its parts, whether
by the claim that it comes from heaven (Torah min-haShamayim), or
as the Word of God (Dei Verbum), raises significant moral problems,
which I have addressed here (Chapter 7). In confronting those tradi-
tions that appear to conflict with either one's own humane values, or
that appear to contradict a whole range of other traditions, including
many within the biblical text itself, one is engaged in a hermeneutical
activity of considerable sophistication.
For much of the period of Christendom, Christian Theology-of
which the study of the Bible is the soul-has enjoyed the status of
'queen of the sciences'. Increasingly since the Enlightenment and the
scientific revolution, it has had to settle for a somewhat eccentric
position on the periphery of Western culture, and now aspires to
acquire a more modest position within the complex of human dis-
course. Precisely because of the tragedies that have shocked civiliza-
tion in this century (two great wars, a list of partially completed
genocides, wide availability of weaponry of awesome powers of
destruction, etc.), there is wide agreement on questions of human
rights, and a sensitivity to the need to curtail the excesses of belliger-
ence. Although many of the conventions are respected more convinc-
ingly at the level of rhetoric rather than in practice, they serve as
benchmarks against which to measure moral behaviour. By such stan-
dards, the biblical traditions we have examined here fall embarrass-
ingly short.
While the scholastic community has provided 'rich and suggestive
studies on the "land theme" in the Bible ... they characteristically stop
before they get to the hard part, contemporary issues of land in the
Holy Land' (Brueggemann, in March 1994: vii). The preferred mode
for dealing with the embarrassing traditions of the Bible in one major
Christian tradition is by a combination of evasion of the offending
traditions (that is, excluding them altogether from the lectionary and
the Divine Office), and, where such texts contain edifying elements, of
excising from the public liturgy those portions of the Word of God
that would perplex worshippers sensitive to the ideals of human rights
and international legality. Christian Theology and the Christian
Church should confront the moral questions which I have considered
here. The problem is no less acute for Jewish Theology and Judaism. I
deem the present work to be an exploration into terrain virtually
devoid of enquirers, and an attempt to map out some of the contours
of that terrain. It does not pretend to have all the answers, but it does
reflect the author's dissatisfaction with the prevailing scholastic assess-
ments of the matter, especially the most common ones, which prefer
the security of silence to risking the opprobrium of speaking out.
This study has moved beyond the conventional exegetical
approaches, and attempted to subject the biblical narrative to a moral-
literary analysis. Rather than provide an exegesis that removes itself
from the social, political and moral context, it responds to Erich
Auerbach's appeal to reunify the secular and the religious critical
tradition, a task he undertook so tellingly in his Mimesis (1946, ET
1953). This study on the link between the Bible and colonialism is a
work of applied biblical exegesis which is distinctive in its concern for
morality and acceptable human behaviour. It is not simply a protest at
the neglect of the moral question in Euro-American biblical herme-
neutics, but is also an attempt to rescue the Bible from being a blunt
instrument in the oppression of people. I trust that my conscientious
probings into a web of immensely complicated issues, within and
Conclusion 295
between conventionally disparate discourses, will encourage others to
attempt to deal with the substantial issues I raise. I hope that my work
contributes to a rise of moral indignation at what has been perpetrated
on indigenous peoples by colonizers, with the support of the biblical
paradigm of alleged settler colonization at the behest of the divinity. It
is my hope that my enterprise will promote a discourse that questions
present assumptions. It invites comment on the 'value of our values',
and in particular on the problematic of the bloodshed that was justified
by the piety of the 'good'. My study has a diagnostic function. It
uncovers layers below the surface and names them. The intent is not
only diagnostic, however, but aspires also to being recuperative, since
I contend that the biblical texts have a specific value, and should not be
deployed in ways that offend the basic, decent values of a culture most
of us hope to create. I have indicated the lines along which the future
discussion may run (Chapter 7). It will need to provide a more credi-
ble notion of the Bible as the Word of God, of Divine Inspiration, and
of the Authority of Sacred Scripture. For no other reason, then, a
scholar of the Bible must not be satisfied with an unearthing of the
past, but must enquire into its significance and place in contemporary
society.
They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force-nothing
to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident aris-
ing from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for
the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggra-
vated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind-as is very
proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which
mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different com-
plexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when
you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the
back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in
the idea-something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a
sacrifice to (Marlow, in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness).
Biblical scholarship must set its own house in order by articulating
ethical criteria by which dispositions unworthy of a civilized person
may not be accorded a privileged place as part of a sacred text. When
the sacred pages are manipulated by forces of oppression, biblical
scholars cannot continue to seek refuge by expending virtually all
their intellectual energies on an unrecoverable past, thereby releasing
themselves from the obligation of engaging in contemporary dis-
course. Nor are they justified in maintaining an academic detachment
296
from significant engagement in real, contemporary issues. While it
may be conceded by some that 'social and political action is not the
direct task of the exegete' (Pontifical Biblical Commission 1993: 68), I
can think of no circumstance in which such activity is not incumbent
on a Christian exegete, qua Christian.
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1986 Breaking Down the Walls: World Council of Churches' Statements and
Actions on Racism (Geneva: WCC).
Wright, Christopher J.H.
I 983 Living as the People of God (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press).
I 990 God's People in God's Land: Family, Land, and Property in the Old
Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Exeter: Paternoster).
Wright, George E.
1960 'The Old Testament', in Wright and Fuller 1960: 32-37.
I 962 Biblical Archaeology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 2nd edn).
Wright G.E., and R.H. Fuller (eds.)
1960 The Book of the Acts of God: Christian Scholarship Interprets the
Bible (London: Duckworth).
Yadin, Yigael
1979
1982
Yapp, M.E.
I987
Yaron, Zvi
1991
'The Transition from a Semi-Nomadic to a Sedentary Society in the
Twelfth Century BCE', in Cross 1979: 57-68.
'Is the Biblical Conquest of Canaan Historically Reliable?', Biblical
Archaeology Review 8.2: 16-23.
The Making of the Modern Near East, 1792-1923 (London: Longman).
The Philosophy of Rabbi Kook (Jerusalem: Eliner Library).
Younger, K.L., Jr
1990 Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Near Eastern and Biblical
History Writing (JSOTSup, 98; Sheffield: JSOT Press).
Zangwill, Israel
I920
I937
Zimmerlei, W.
1976
The Voice of Jerusalem (London: Heinemann).
Speeches, Articles and Letters of Israel Zangwil/, Selected and Edited
by Maurice Simon (London: Soncino Press).
'Land and Possession', in The Old Testament and the World (London:
SCM Press): 67-79.
Zuckerman, William
1962 Voice of Dissent: Jewish Problems, 1948-1961 (New York: Bookman
Zureik, Elia
1994
Associates).
'Palestinian Refugees and Peace', Journal of Palestine Studies 24: 5-
17.
INDEXES
INDEX OF REFERENCES
OLD TESTAMENT
Genesis 23 218, 221 7.14 20
1-11 18, 217, 23.4 221 8.1 20
223, 225, 25.12-18 222 8.8 20
242 25.25 222 8.20 20
1.28 100 26 218 9.13 20
11.1-9 100 26.2-4 217 10.3 20
11.27-50.26 18, 217 26.3-4 19, 218 12.8 20
11.28-31 220 27.29 220 12.24-25 20
11.28 217 28.1-4 217 12.37-40 20
11.31 218 28.4 19, 218 12.41 220
12-50 220, 224 28.13-15 19 13.4-9 150
12 242 32.4 217 13.5-6 20
12.1-3 221 35.12 19 13.11-16 150
12.2-3 221 35.27 221 13.11-12 20
12.2 217 49.10 220 15.1-27 276
12.5 217 50.24 19, 221 15.1-16 20
12.6-7 18, 218 50.26 221 15.1-5 276
12.6 221
15.1-2 281
12.20 18 Exodus 15.6-8 276
13.5-6 18
1-19 223 15.9-13 277
13.7 18, 221 1.1-15.21 19 15.14-16 277
13.12-14 217 2.13 223 15.17-19 20
13.14-17 18, 218 2.22 19 15.17-18 277
13.18 18 2.24
19, 218, 223 15.19-27 277
14 219 3 274 16.35 20
15 222, 289 3.1-8 274 17.8-16 20
15.1-18 217 3.7-10 279 17.8-13 274
15.13 220 3.7-8 274, 279 17.11-13 274
15.18-21 18, 218 3.7 103 18.8 241
16.10-12 217 3.8 20, 274, 280 19.1-40.38 19
17.2-5 221 3.17 20 19.2 19
17.5-8 19, 218 4.5 223 19.3-8 21
17.5 220 6.2-4 20 19.4-5 281
17.15-22 217 6.3-5 221 20 21, 223
20 218 6.6-8 20 20.12 224
20.13 280 19.34 124 21.3 275
21-23 21 20.2 23 21.4-9 275
22.21 21 20.9-21 23 21.21-24 24
22.28 229 20.22-27 23 21.34-35 24
23 280 20.22-24 261 22-24 25
23.9 21 21-22 22 22.1-36.13 24
23.14-17 205 23 22 25.1-3 25
23.20-23 276 23.10 204 25.12 25
23.22-23 276 23.22 204 25.16-17 25
23.23-24 21 23.28 22 25.34 224
23.27-33 21 25 22, 110 26.55 229
23.28-30 274 25.2-3 23 27 25
24.13 241 25.2 204 29-34 224
25-40 22 26 22, 23 31 25
32.17 241 26.3-13 23 31.8-16 25
32.19-21 21 26.11-39 23 31.18 25
32.26-30 21, 280 26.32-39 23 31.19-20 25
33.1-3 21, 280 26.40-42 23 32 25
33.1 218 26.42 218 32.6-23 25
34.1-5 21 26.44-46 23 32.11 218
34.8-9 21 26.44-45 207 33.50-56 25
34.11-15 22, 280 27 22, 23 33.50-52 229
34.16-23 22 34-35 26
34.24 22 Numbers 35.9-10 204
34.27-28 22 1-10 224 36.13 26
34.32 22 1.1-10.10 24
35-40 22 1.45-46 24 Deuteronomy
4.48 24 1.1-33.29 223
Leviticus 5-6 24 1.1-4.49 26
1-7 22 6.24-26 151 1.6-8 26
8-10 22 7.1-10.10 24 1.8 218
10.8-11 22 10-36 224 1.30-31 26
11-16 22 10.10 19, 223 1.36 227
14.34 23 10.11-36.13 223 1.39 227
17-26 224 10.11-21.35 24 2.4-7 222
17-20 22 10.11-12.16 24 2.33-34 26
18 23 13.1-15.41 24 3.3 26
18.1-5 23 13.18 241 3.18 227
18.21 23 13.27-29 24 3.22 26
18.22 23 14.7-9 24 3.27-29 26
18.23 23 14.24 241 4.1-8 26
18.24-30 23, 224 14.25 24 4.25-31 224, 228
18.24-25 68, 261 14.30 241 4.26-27 26
18.24 229 15.31 268 4.35 227
19.23 203 20.12 24 4.37-38 92
19.29 224 20.22-29 24 4.39 227
19.33-34 23 21.1-3 24, 275 4.40 224
19.33 124 21.2 275 4.41-42 204
Index of References
333
5.1-11.32 26 17.14 227 33.27-29 29
5.6-21 26 18.9-14 68, 229, 261 34 242
5.16 224 18.9 227 34.1-3 29
5.29-30 224 19.1-2 204 34.4-12 29
6.4 227 19.1 227 34.4 227
6.10-15 27 19.8 227 34.6 29
6.18-19 27
20.1-21.14 28
7 224 20.4 28 Joshua
7.1-11 27 20.11-14 28
1-12 31, 228,
7.1-5 275 20.14 227
232, 251,
7.2 227 20.16-18 28, 227, 275
252, 289
7.3-4 93 20.16 227
29
7.6-11 275 21.6-9 224 1.1-4 30
7.7-8 92
21.10-14 228 1.24 30
7.9 227 21.11 28 2.1-12.24 29
7.16 34 21.15-23.1 28 3.1-5.1 30
8.1-9 224 21.22-23 224 3.7-11 275
8.18 227 22.2-4 229 3.10 275
9 275 22.9-11 92 3.13-17 275
9.1-5 27 23.2-25.19 28 4.21-22 226
9.4-6 229 23.4-9 228 5.12 275
9.5
68, 224, 261 24.1-4 224 5.13-6.27 30
9.8-29 27 26.1 204 6.17 30
10.14-15 92
26.6-10 28 6.20-21 36
11.8-21 224 26.9 227 6.20 30
11.8-9 28
26.16-28.68 26 6.21-27 30
11.23 28 27.1-26 28 7 .II 30
11.24 28 27.2 227 7.25-26 30
11.31-32 28 28.1-69 28 8.2 30
12.1-26.15 26 28.8 227 8.19-29 30
12.1-26.12 28 28.53 227 8.30-35 30
12.2-3 28 29.1-30.20 26 9-12 242
12.9 227 29.13-29 28 9.1-2 30
12.11 28 30.1-10 228 9.21 30
12.15 227 30.1 227 9.23 30
12.21 227 30.3-5 28 9.24 30
12.29-30 28, 275 30.15-20 29 9.27 30
13.10 28 31.1-34.12 26 10 30, 31
13.13 227 31.3-6 29 10.12-13 31
14.29 228 31.16-21 29 10.28-32 37
15.17 227 32.1-43 29 10.28 31
16.1-17 205 32.8-9 100
I 0.29-39 31
16.5 227 32.26 224 10.36 243
16.11 228 32.39 227 I 0.40-43 31
16.14 228 32.44 241 10.40-42 243
16.18 227 32.46-47 29, 224 11 30, 31
16.20 28, 227 32.52 29
11.1-3 31
17.6 227 33 29 11.7-9 31
11.11 31 23.2 267 19.4 53
11.16-23 31 33.5 153
12 31 1 Kings 38 84
12.1-6 31 14.25 230 38.12-16 86
12.3-4 219 16.34 241 38.12 86
12.7-24 31 21 281 38.21 86
12.12 219 44.3 229
13-22 243 2 Kings 46 84
13-21 31 22-23 224 57(58) 278
13.1-21.45 29 24.13 245 65.9-13 32
1,3 .1 31 25 226 74.14 103
15.13-19 228 25.13-17 245 78.54-66 33
15.13-14 243 78.54-55 32
15.63 228 1 Chronicles 80.8 33
16.10 228 7.27 241 80.9-16 81
17.11-13 228 81.11-12 33
19.47 228 2 Chronicles 82(83) 278
19.50 244 36.19 245 89.31-34 90
21.43-45 31 36.22-23 245 105 241
22.1-24.33 29, 32 105.6 241
22.1-34 32 Ezra 105.9 241
23 32 1.1-4 245 105.17 241
24 32, 275 1.5-11 245 105.26 241
24.1-8 32 4-6 245 105.43-44 32
24.8 229 6.21 162 105.44 229
24.13 229, 263 9.1 162 106 241
24.29-33 32 10.11 162 106.16 241
24.30 244 106.30 241
Nehemiah I 08( I 09) 278
Judges 1-11 245 114 33
I 228, 243 8.17 241 117 277
1.1 241 9 241 118 84
1.8 233 9.2 162 119.145-52 276
1.9-10 243 9.7 220, 241 130 84
1.13 233 9.14 241 134 86
2.6-9 241 10.28 162 137.5 Ill
6.1-24 86 13.3 162 146 84
11.19-21 229
Job Isaiah
I Samuel 9.1-12 276 2.5 119
12 241 9.14-16 276 10.26 32
12.6-8 241 36.2-4 58 11.16 103
12.8 241 36.10-12 58 25.6-10 275
12.11 241 27.1-3 81
12.18-22 241 Psalms 40-55 33
3.6 103 42.5-7 279
2 Samuel 9.4 103 45.1-24 245
7.23 229 10.18 103 51.2 219, 220
Index of References
335
55.2-13 284 Daniel
Tobit
55.3 222 1.2 245 14.4 202
60.9 260
5.2-4 245 14.5 202
61 286
61.2 281 Hosea
Wisdom of Solomon
65.17 53 1.1 267 12.3 202
9.9 32
Jeremiah
Ecclesiasticus
2.7 33
Joel
34.18-22 60
3.18 33
1.6-10 90 34.21-27 58
7.7 33
1.15-2.1 90
34.23-26 62
11.5 33 3.1-21 90
46.1-8 241
32.22-23 33 3.1-2 267 46.8 202
32.22 33
3.2 159
46.11-12 32
32.23 33
Amos
1 Maccabees
Ezekiel
2.10 32 2.55 241
13.10-14 102
15.22-23 201
20.6 33 Jonah
15.33-34 263
20.15 33 1.2 62 15.33 229
33.24 219, 223
34.9-10 222 Micah
2 Maccabees
36.34-36 162 7.20 223 1.7 202
47.13-14 229
2 Esdras
7.37 241
NEW TEST AMENT
Matthew
24.27 17 28.25 267
5.17 17
24.44-49 286
8.20 285 24.44 17, 284 Romans
22.43 267 24.49 286 1.16 286
23.15-38 62
3.20-21 272
28.16-20 286 John
3.21 17
1.1 269 4.13 281
Mark
1.46 17 6.14 272
6.17-20 62 4.21 281, 285 9.4-5 286
12.36 267
9.4 284
13.12-13 62 Acts
10.1 286
1.3-8 286 10.12 286
Luke
1.8
285, 286 11.25-26 286
I .46-55 281 1.16 267
13.1-7 102
1.68-79 277
2.5-11 100, 201
2.29-32 84 7.45
33, 241 Galatians
4.18-20 281 I 0.28-35 285
2.15-5.1 272
4.18-19 103 13.15 17
4.25-26 285
18.1-8 274 17.26 100
Philippians 11.13-15 284 Revelation
3.20 284 11.32-34 32 3.12 285
12.22 284 6.10 278
2 Timothy 7.9 285
3.16-17 268 James 7.14 103
1.22 265 21.1 53
Hebrews 21.2 285
4.8 33, 241 2 Peter 21.10 285
7.11-19 272 1.10-11 277
10.8-9 272 1.19-21 268
OTHER ANCIENT REFERENCES
Pseudepigrapha Qumran b. Ket.
1 En. CD !lOb 203
89.40 202 2.9-11 203
90.20 202 4.10 203 b. Meg.
lOb 283
2 Bar. IQM
1.1 202 2 203 b. Sab.
9.2 202 127a 151
JQS
4 Ezra 1.5 203 b. Sanh.
9.7-9 202 8.3 203 39b 283
13.39-47 201 9.3-5 203 99a 268
Barn. Mishnah Midrashim
12.2-3 33, 274 Ber. Exod. R.
12.8-10 33 4.5 204 9.10 283
Jub.
Kef.
Philo
6.12-13 202 1.6-9 204 Leg. Gai.
12.22 202 281-82 201
13.2 202 Ro.( Ha.(.
13.3 202 4.1-3 204 Spec. Leg.
13.6 202 I 205
15.28 202 Sanh.
22.27 202 10.1 268 Josephus
10.3.5 201 Ant.
Pss. Sol. 11.5.2 201
17.26-28 202 Ta'an. 14.7,2 201
1.3 205
Sib. Or. Flacc.
3.266-67 202 Talmuds 46 289
3.271 201 b. Ber.
5a 204 War
2.16.4 201
7.3.3 201
Christian Authors
Justin
Dial.
113 33
Ep. Arist.
line 107 202
Index of References
Classical
A en.
1.57-59 220
2.2 220
337
3.97 220
1.267-69 220
1.270-72 220
286-88 220
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Abu-Lughod, 1. 151, 290
Adams, M. 123, 125, 131, 132
Adler, M.N. 206
Aharoni, Y. 232
Ahlstrom, G.W. 218,219,222, 226,
230, 236, 251
Albright, W.F. 225, 232, 233
Aldeeb, S. 138, 139
Alfaro, 1 .I. 253
Alkalai, 1. 116
Alt, A. 230-32, 234, 235
Alter, R. 242, 243, 264
Anderson, B. 246
Arif, 'Arif al- 136
Arizpe, L. 63
Aronson, G. 142
Assmann, H. 280
Ateek, N.S. 39, 40, 259-61, 270, 271,
281
Auerbach, E. 294
Avineri, S. 113-17, 152
Bainton, R.H. 263
Barr, 1. 261
Bartlett, 1.R. 33
Bastide, R. 175
Bax, D. 100
Bein, A. 106
Beit-Hallahmi, B. 200
Ben-Gurion, D. 129, 131, 136, 139,
140, 156, 186, 187, 189, 192,
193, 197, 209-11
Ben-Yehuda, N. 200
Benjamin, W. 292
Benvenisti, M. 142
Beozzo, 1.0. 48, 59, 66-68, 183
Berger, E. 259
Berman!, C. 41, 169
Berryman, P. 59, 279
Betto, F. 280
Bezuidenhout, C.P. 81
Bickerman, E.J. 201
Birnbaum, N. 106
Bloomberg, C. 74, 75, 90
Blum, E. 225, 226, 243
Boesak, A. 96, 100
Boff, L. 63, 70
Boff, V. 70
Bokser, B.Z. 153
Bonino, 1.M. 260
Boorer, S. 226
Borah, W.W. 64
Brettler, M.Z. 247, 249
Bright, 1. 232
Brown, Derek 42, 168
Brown, Dee 208
Brown, R.E. 266, 269
Brown, R.M. 102
Brueggemann, W. 253, 254, 294
Buber, M. 112, 171, 172
Buis, P. 96
Buren, P. van 259
Burkholder, M.A. 50, 51, 64, 65
Byron, A. 115
Carmi, T. 205-207
Carroll, R. 41, 245, 246
Chacour, E. 139
Cherry, C. 282
Childers, E.B. 188, 190, 191
Childs, B.S. 223
Churchill, W.S. 182
Clines, D.J.A. 243
Coggins, R.J. 266
Index of Authors
339
Cohen, S.J.D. 93
Cone, J.H. 100, 280, 281
Conrad, J. 294
Coogan, M.D. 244
Coote, R.B. 229, 236, 238, 250
Cossali, P. 194
Cragg, K. 256
Croix, G.E.M. de Ste II, 261
Davies, P.R. 216, 243
Davies, W.O. 199, 204, 207, 208, 253-
58
Davis, U. 139, 259
Dayan, M. 156
Deist, F.E. 71, 91-93, 104, 292
Deurlo, K.A. 227
Dion, P.E. 93
Disraeli, B. 115
Doron, G. 158
Draper, J. 105
Dupertuis, A.R. 278, 279
Dussel, E. 57, 59
Eiselen, W.W.M. 76
Eisenstadt, S.N. 175
EI-Assal, R.A. 119
Eliot, G. 115
Elizondo, V. 63
Ellacurfa, I. 68
Ellis, M. 200, 259
Elphick, R. 95
Esquivel, J. 64
Evans, C.A. 270
Exum, J.C. 243
Fackenheim, E. 199, 200
Fierro, A. 280
Finkelstein, N.G. 135, 140, 178, 191-
93, 196-98, 235-38
Fitzmyer, J.A. 266
Flanagan, J. 238
Flapan, S. 187, 192
Fox, R.W. 259
Freedman, D.N. 256
Friedman, T. 160, 163
Fritz, V. 232
Fuller, R.H. 274
Gantin, P. de 182
Garbini, G. 217, 220, 222, 243, 244
Geertz, C. 175
Geffen, Y. 196
Geraisy, S. 138, 139
Gerhard, D. 175
Geus, C.H.J. de 235
Gilbert, M. 199
Ginzberg, A.Z. 188
Gnuse, R. 234, 236, 237
Goguel, A.-M. 96
Goldingay, J. 219
Gordon, D.O. 175
Gordon, Y.L. 118
Gottwald, N.K. 234, 235
Gould, S.J. 89
Graetz, H. 115
Greenberg, I. 200
Gresh, A. 133
Gruchy, J.W. de 96, 97, 101
Gutierrez, G. 279, 280, 282
Hagenmeyer, H. 35
Halabi, U. 143
Halpern, B. 114, 199
Halpern-Amaru, B. 202, 203
Harris, W.W. 142
Harrison, P. 50, 51
Hartz, L. 175
Hayes, J.H. 242, 250
Hemelsoet, B. 226
Hennelly, A.T. 63
Hennessy, A. 174
Herr, M.D. 248
Hertzberg, A. 149, 155, 159
Herzl, T. 106-13, 115, 119, 127, 128,
148, 156, 170, 181, 188, 189
Hess, M. 116, 118
Hitchens, C. 190, 191
Hobbs, T.R. 261
Hofstede, H.J. 86
Hope, M. 96
Hopkins, D. 237
Houlden, J.L. 266
Huddleston, T. 97
Hurbon, L. 51
Hurwitz, D. 169, 259
Ingrams, D. 123-28, 182 Lohfink, N. 26
Jaarsveld, F. van 95, 96
Jennings, F. 176-78
Jensen, J. 278
Johnson, L.L. 50, 51, 64, 65
Kadir, D. 48, 53-55
Kalidi, W. 129
Kalley, J.A. 72
Kayyali, A.W.A. 127
Kenyon, K. 233
Kermode, F. 242, 243, 264
Kestell, J.D. 81
Khalidi, R. 122, 151
Khalidi, W. 125, 128, 129, 131, 136-
39, 187
Khayat, S. 142
Khoury, F.J. 133
Kimmerling, B. 184, 196, 197
Klerk, W .A. de I 04
Kochavi, M. 237
Koestler, A. 125
Kook, A.I. 153-55, 157, 158, 160, 162
Kook, Z.Y. 158, 159, 161, 162, 164,
166
Kreutz, A. Ill
Kuyper, A. 90, 91
Kwok, P. 40, 261, 283
Lamadrid, A.G. 52, 53, 171
Landau, D. 167
Lang, J. 175
Laqueur, W. 109, Ill, 114, 150
Las Casas, B. de 53,57-61,63, 181,
182, 184
Lehn, W. 110, 118, 122, 127, 129, 133,
173, 188-90
Leibowitz, S. 168
Leibowitz, Y. 259
Lemche, N.P. 236, 238, 243, 244, 248
Lester, A. 9, 72, 75-78, 82, 85
Levine, D.H. 52, 63
Lilienblum, M.L. 118
Lind, M.C. 261
Littell, F.H. 259
Locke, R. 194
Lockhart, J. 52, 56, 60, 61, 180, 182
Lonsdale, J. 13
Loots, P.J. 93
Lopez, F.G. 226
Loubser, J.A. 91
Lustick, I.S. 158
MacBride, S.D. 142, 143
Mair, J. 54
Malamat, A. 232
Marks, S. 95
Masalha, N. 140, 190
Matar, I. 143
Mayes, A.D.H. 226, 227
Mayhew, C. 123, 125, 131, 132
Mazar, A. 235
Mazzini, G. 116
McCarthy, J. 121
McDowall, D. 9, 89, 192, 194
Mendenhall, G.E. 233-35
Menuhin, M. 190, 212, 259
Mergui, R. 160, 163, 165-67
Metz, J.B. 63
Meyers, C. 236
Millard, A.R. 219, 249
Miller, J.M. 242
Miller, P.D., Jr 227, 249, 250
Mires, F. 66
Mo'az, M. 134
Mofokeng, T.A. 100, 105
Moodie, T.D. 73, 74, 78, 79, 81, 83-85,
90, 91, 94,96
Morris, B. 131, 134, 135, 138, 140,
186, 187, 189-92, 194, 210, 211
Murphy, R.E. 266
Nahmani, Y. 211
Neff, D. 141, 180
Neher, A. 172, 280
Nelson, R.D. 244
Neusner, J. 249, 256, 257
Newman, D. 43
Niditch, S. 262, 263, 268, 283, 291,
292
Niebuhr, R. 259
Nora, P. 175
Noth, M. 230
Index of Authors
341
O'Connell, R.H. 93
Oded, B. 240
O'Mahony, A. 119
O'Neill, D. 41
Orlinsky, H.M. 217, 254
Ortiz, T. 181
Otte, E. 52, 56, 60, 61, 180, 182
Padron, F.M. 52
Parsons, M.C. 264
Patai, R. I 07
Pawlikowski, J. 259
Peretz, D. 158
Perlman, E. 118
Peters, J. 179
Pickles, D. 175
Pike, F.B. 67
Pinsker, L. 117
Pixley, G.V. 280
Playfair, E. 140
Plessis, J.S. du 73, 83, 89
Ploger, J. 227
Panting, C. 180
Pose!, D. 76
Preller, G. 83, 85
Prior, M. 35, 40, 144, 268, 272, 286
Prudky, M. 12, 223
Quigley,J. 128,137
Rad,G. von 227,253
Ramsey, G. 234
Rantisi, A. 191,259
Redford, D.B. 260
Reitz, F.W. 73, 83, 84
Rendtorff, R. 225, 226
Richard, P. 51, 63,65-67,69, 183,278
Riley-Smith, J. 35
Riley-Smith, L. 35
Ritschl, A. 117
Robson, C. 194
Rokach, L. 193
Rowton, M. 237
Roy, J. 175
Ruether, H. 259
Ruether, R.R. 259
Sabbah, M. 270, 271
Sabella, B. 137, 212
Sacks, J. 34, 42, 172, 268
Said, E.W. 138, 261, 282
Salinas, M. 60-62
Schafer, B. 107
Schlink, B. 182
Schmid, H.H. 225
Schneiders, S.M. 269
Schiirer, E. 16, 17, 34, 201, 266
Schweid, E. 150, 210
Segev, T. 195
Sepulvedae, G. 55, 56, 60, 68, 180, 182
Seward, D. 35, 36
Shahak, I. 138, 142
Shapira, A. 179, 192, 193
Shiblak, A. 209
Shlaim, A. 187
Simon, L. 188
Simonetti, M. 33, 274
Simonnot, P. 160, 163, 165-67
Sobrino, J. 63, 67, 68
Soggin, A. 236, 250
Sperber, M. 199
Sprinzak, E. 158-61, 163-65, 167
Stager, L. 237
Steenkamp, A. 83
Stegner, W.R. 270
Stein, L. 120
Stendahl, K. 256
Stewart, A. 194
Stiebing, W. 238
Stuhlman, L. 92
Sykes, C. 128, 188
Tamarin, G.R. 36-39
Teveth, S. 189
Thea!, G.M. 85, 87
Thiselton, A.C. 266
Thompson, L. 73, 76, 79, 81, 83, 85-
89, 94-96, 180, 181, 184
Thompson, T.L. 9, 219, 226, 228, 231,
235, 236, 239-41, 243, 245-49,
251, 260
Timerman, J. 288
Todorov, T. 54, 56, 59, 181
Toit, S.J. du 79, 82, 84, 92
Toribo, F. 180
Toynbee, A. 39
342
Vaage, L.E. 69
Van Seters, J. 219, 225, 243, 248
Vaux, R. de 249
Vervenne, M. 225
Veyne, P. 242
Vidal, D. 133
Villa-Vicencio, C. 96
Villet, B. I 04
Vital, D. 109, 119
Vitoria, F. de 59
Vorster, W. 100
W achten, J. I 07
Wagner, D. 41, 259
W agua, A. 44, 48
Walzer, M. 282
Warrior, R.A. 43, 282
Watson, F. 266
Weinfeld, M. 220, 221, 229
Weippert, M. 230, 231
Weiss, J. 117
Weitz, Y. 131, 189,210,211
Weizmann, C. 120, 123, 126-29, 131
Wellhausen, J. 219, 224
Werblowsky, R.J.Z. 256
West, G. 105
Whale, J.S. 257
White, H. 242
Whitelam, K.W. 39, 186,229,230,236,
238, 250, 260
Whybray, R.N. 219, 220, 223, 225,
250
Wiesel, E. 200
Williams, G. 208
Wilmot, A. 184
Wright, G.E. 232
Yadin, Y. 232
Yapp, M.E. 121
Y aron, Z. 154-56
Young, J. 96
Zangwill, I. Ill, 115, 120, 150, 151,
179, 181
THE BIBLE AND
COLONIALISM
The biblical claim of the divine promise of land is integrally linked with
a divine mandate to exterminate the indigenous people. The narrative
has supported virtually all We tern colonizing enterprises (e.g. in Latin
America, South Africa, Palestine), resulting in the suffering of millions of
people, and loss of respect for the Bible. According to modern secular
standards of human and political rights, what the biblical narrative calls
for are war-crimes and crimes against humanity. In this provocative and
compelling study, Prior protests at the neglect of the moral question in
conventional biblical studies, and attempts to rescue the Bible fiom being
a blunt instrument in the oppression of people.
Dr .\fidwcl Prior is Head of tlte Department of Tlteolo,(!y and Rel('?iotts St11dies
at St. Mary's University College, U11ivcrsity of S11rrey.
Cover illustration:
Ivory Pa11cl
Rima Farah
l3y k1nd pcrmi'\IOn of 1-Jrah Jack\on

..., A
Sheffield Academic Press
The Biblical 4H
ISBN 1 85075 815 8

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A MORAL CRITIQUE

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